Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

VIA C3 Random Number Generator Reviewed

Posted by timothy on from the but-these-are-all-threes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "VIA has added a hardware random number generator to its Nehemiah C3 CPU. I found a recent review of its security. Interesting how it's done at the instruction level as opposed to the chipset level used by the i810 RNG (also reviewed there)."

1 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. Randomness by Viral+Fly-by · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't it interesting how much importance we place on quote unquote "true" randomness of numbers? We expect (or at least hope that) a computer can generate random numbers time and time again without fail...

    But any human being would prove horrible at such a task... In fact, if you ask a human being for 3 random numbers, odds are very good that they will give you at least two sequential ones...such as 7 6 2...or 5 9 8...

    I guess that's the point of computers though...if we could all calculate as fast as a computer, process data as fast as a computer, and perform other tasks as fast and as well as a computer, we wouldn't need computers, now would we?

    Random number generation is an interesting topic though because it is often seen as a fault of computers... People claim that computers are "incapable" of generating random numbers. So are human beings... I can understand a computer not being able to store a floating point number with a hundred digits after the decimal point being considered a fault, because FEASIBLY a human being COULD perform the operations and have the value exact out to a hundred decimal places. But with random numbers...a human couldn't do it even remotely as well a computer can, so why is it considered such a weakness of computers? Maybe the power of computers to break their own codes because numbers aren't truly random is the reason they are sought after in the first place.