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Using Lasers To Generate Random Numbers Faster
Pranav writes "Using semiconductor lasers, scientists from Takushoku University, Saitama University, and NTT Corporation achieved random number rates of up to 1.7 gigabits per second, which is about 10 times higher than the second-best rate, produced using a physical phenomenon. Future work may center on devising laser schemes that can achieving rates as high as 10 Gbps."
The "Real Genius" and "sharks" jokes you're about to post are less than 1% as funny and clever as you think they are. And no, you're not making them ironically, you're making them because you really do think they're good jokes. This is because you are retarded.
Has anyone out there actually had their system bottlenecked by lack of random numbers? I had thought that the bottleneck in serving large amounts of SSL content was processing the asymmetric part of the cyrpto -- hence the need for SSL accelerator cards. It's a nice invention and a creative application of physical process, but I really want to see just one case where this would be lead to a substantial benefit.
As an aside, computer simulations always use pseudoRNGs like the Mersenne Twister[1]. For a reasonable exponent (I use 19937 in my simulations), this results in a period > 10^6000 and virtually no correlations between adjacent calls. The notion of a computational physicist using a real physical RNG is laughable.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_twister
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance." -- Robert R. Coveyou
They should somehow tap into phpBB. I'm already on some forums that generate more than twice this much bullshit every second :)
"Fields and applications that could benefit from their work are numerous, including computational models to solve problems in nuclear medicine, computer graphic design, and finance."
This explains a great deal.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
What, no frikkin' sharks?
Caveat Utilitor
If it is chaotic and you believe in the Everett Interpretation, they've just produced the worlds fastest world splitter.
WTF, do we really need the date and time twice on every story... Fix it Taco...
Surely this will give sharks the edge over humans when their attack patterns become highly unpredictable. These researchers are giving our mortal enemies a huge advantage.
Next, the article claims...
Generating random numbers using physical sources -- which can be as simple as coin-flipping and tossing dice -- are preferred over other methods, such as computer generation, because they yield nearly ideal random numbers: those that are unpredictable, unreproducible, and statistically unbiased.
This is garbage -- there are applications where people prefer physical sources, but those of us doing simulation work realized long ago that good algorithmic sources are far better for our needs: 1) It's mighty hard to debug a complex simulation model without reproducibility; 2) You can use the reproducibility to induce covariance between runs, greatly reducing the standard error of your estimates for a given sampling effort; 3) The distributions of algorithmically generated pseudo-random numbers are provably uniform, whereas for physical sources the best you know is that they haven't (yet) failed a hypothesis test for uniformity. Finally, the last statement about being "statistically unbiased" is utter nonsense -- unbiasedness is a property of an estimator, not a distribution.
I suspect encountering the words "random" and "laser" in the same sentence would be rather disconcerting to an eye surgeon. Maybe I'm off topic...
random number rates of up to 1.7 gigabits per second, ... Future work may center on devising laser schemes that can achieving rates as high as 10 Gbps."
Oh, I can get 3.4 gigabits right here. I'll take a second such laser.
Or, ten of them. A 17 Gbps device instead of your hoped for 10 Gbps one.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
returning light into laser? doesn't that damage them?
We really, really need more hardware random number generators (RNG's) within CPU's. I think this is one of the more important things for Intel and AMD to work on (VIA and Intel have already working hardware RNG's for x86 as far as I know, with Intel though it is only for an embedded processor).
Otherwise we will have to rely on "commodity" hardware to generate enough randomness to seed our pseudo-RNG's. And since a keyboard, harddisk and video cannot be trusted to be in a machine, and since using the NIC has too big a tie with the outside world, we are quickly running out of entropy sources. So a hardware RNG is definitely a very good idea.
That does not mean that these guys have struck gold. There are already fine RNG's available for use within CPU's. I don't know how secure their device is (what happens when it is underpowered/cooled etc) but speed is not really a problem right now. Of course, if it is easy to implement in current designs: why not?
247
There is no mention of entropy or testing for randomness. 1.7 Gbits could be complete garbage because the entropy necessary for encryption isn't there.
-tyfighter
I tried to duplicate the experiment, but the data doesn't match at all.
we are quickly running out of entropy
Sorry, I thought I had a joke there, but my mind seems to be failing with age. Anyhow, that sentence fragment amused me, so I am quoting it out of context for my own enjoyment. Consider this reply my contribution to randomness.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Meh. Whatever method they use, I can use two of them and produce random numbers at twice the rate that they can.
n/t
you had me at #!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No one will need more than 637 kb of random number generation for a personal computer.
Help fight spam
Now we need put them on sharks and use them to hack in to systems.
Some people is commenting on the article that even if it is quantum generated randomness, it may turn out not be truly random(because "nobody knows, right?").
I guess that the scientists who developed this fantasize with finding correlations in their random number sequence. That would actually be something more interesting than the actual intentions.
This is going to make my D&D games kick ass.
And all the gassbags that run it. Their RNG's have been getting really stressed out lately.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
this can be treated as a "classical physics" problem (and I have every reason to believe his statement about QM length re: a roulette ball), then at least theoretically the statement is correct.
But theory and practice are often vastly different. In a case like this, the information necessary to account for all the relevant initial conditions, and the calculations necessary to go from there to final result, are so vast as to make it ludicrous to even consider trying such a feat. Further, we don't even have the expertise to make such calculations even if we had such "perfect" information.
Think about it: even with classic physics, this is an awesome candidate for the "butterfly effect", in which miniscule differences in initial conditions could cause highly significant differences in the outcome.
See, you don't just need to know the mass of the ball, and its velocity, and such. You would have to know the exact size and mass of the bearings, and exactly how much lubricant had been applied. You would have to know the exact size and shape of the little fences between the numbers on the wheel (air resistance), and calculate Reynolds numbers for them. You would have to know how many people are around the wheel (if any) and how they are breathing. Is someone wearing perfume? Will that affect someone else's breathing? Even without people, did someone add a little bit extra glue at this particular spot, during the manufacturing process?
And so on.
It simply would not be a practical excercise. Even in controlled conditions, and without confounding factors, two well-lubed roulette wheels are almost certain to give you significantly different results, no matter how you try.
Theory is great, but reality trumps.
Intuitively it would seem that the "random" number would have to be related to some combination of constants... in which case, it is breakable regardless of its "seeming" randomness.
I would be more willing to accept their claims of "chaotic", once the results of their RNG have been put through some rigorous tests by independent parties.
See, (honest) roulette wheels were deliberately designed to take advantage of the "butterfly effect", giving different results (red, black, odd, even, first third, etc.) even with the slightest variation of initial conditions. And in fact, if you were to take two different roulette wheels, same make and model, and get predictable results from one based on the known results of the other, I would frankly be amazed. And willing to spend some money on a business proposition...
But the fact is, in practice you can't.
And your final sentence is simply false. For over a hundred years, gamblers and mathematicians have spent many millions of dollars studying these "spinning random number generators".
And in all that time, the only method that has been shown to reliably make money in the long run was to analyze tens of thousands of results from a single wheel, and use that for future predictions on the same wheel. Trying to gauge the performance of one wheel based on the results of another has never borne fruit.
http://xkcd.com/221/
yeah, i see its modded "Score: 5, Funny" but what does it mean
I wonder if this has applications to any of the experiments done at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research department. I seem to remember some of their experiments being dependent upon generating large amounts of *truly* random numbers, usually generated from thermal fluctuations. If you believe them, they were able to generate statistically significant variations in these thermally generated random numbers simply from a person thinking that way...
I know, I know...sounds weird, but read some of their experiments and the outcomes and see what you think.
When we all know the answer is 47. Geeze.
And where does theirs fit in? Hmmm... maybe it IS the fastest!
People who have no sig are cool
I *knew* there was a reason I looked at this comment. I got 'nudged'.
Rather, nothing less than a generously expanded scientific model of reality, one that allows consciousness a proactive role in the establishment of its experience of the physical world, will be required.
You think 8^?
As if time *really does* run in "both" directions. Possibility -- what *can* be -- takes one time dimension, but requires no consciousness to exist; probability -- what *may* be -- takes two, and requires consciousness to exist -- to make choices based on its awareness of the future. Since, as humans, we *do not yet believe* that our consciousness can utilize 'future' data, we are stuck with a certain blindness to such data, which has led us to believe in materiality as "the" true world: a world of *only* possibility. Indeed, it thus *requires* us to look at 'how consciousness works' from an indirect viewpoint.
This model regards the concepts that underlie all physical models of reality, particularly those of observational quantum mechanics such as the principles of uncertainty, complementarity, exclusion, indistinguishability, and wave mechanical resonance, as fundamental characteristics of consciousness rather than as intrinsic features of an objective physical environment.
Nice!
In a complementary approach, a modular conceptual framework has been articulated, wherein direct attention of the conscious mind to observable physical processes is bypassed altogether. Instead, an alternative route is proposed, whereby the inherently probablistic nature of unconscious mind and intangible physical mechanisms are invoked to achieve anomalous acquisition of information about, or anomalous influence upon, otherwise inaccessible material processes.
This is like looking at the world using two mirrors -- one reflecting the other, which reflects the world. Handedness symmetry is preserved, but the picture is dim. Try not being stuck in objectivity. Each consciousness is unique; therefore it will report a unique experience. Because there is "unconscious" feedback occurring, experiences -- and their reports -- rapidly diverge. Chaos theory might be helpful in studying this.
The real problem in consciousness research is this: since every consciousness has unique experiences, any "objective" explanation runs the risk of reflecting a bias of the researcher. While statistical analysis appears to provide some "objective" data, its very sketchiness and inability to predict the action of any *given* consciousness, renders it somewhat less than useful (at least in normative terms).
How, as well, -- since we are studying consciousness -- do the researchers control for their own 'unconscious' biases? Can they even identify what those biases *are*?
Ultimately, we are going to end up back at a William Jamesian (pre-Freudian) psychology, based on subjectivity and introspection. Psychiatrists will move from being authorities to guides, as the '60's Third Way movement showed that it was possible for them to do. Hopefully we will, by that time, through such researches as this, have better consciousness tools and a larger vocabulary to describe what is going on.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.