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The Mersenne Twister is a general-purpose pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) developed in 1997 by Makoto Matsumoto (松本 眞) and Takuji Nishimura (西村 拓士). [ 1][ 2] Its name derives from the choice of a Mersenne prime as its period length. The Mersenne Twister was designed specifically to rectify most of the flaws found in older PRNGs.
Xorshift random number generators, also called shift-register generators, are a class of pseudorandom number generators that were invented by George Marsaglia. [ 1] They are a subset of linear-feedback shift registers (LFSRs) which allow a particularly efficient implementation in software without the excessive use of sparse polynomials. [ 2]
Lavarand, also known as the Wall of Entropy, was a hardware random number generator designed by Silicon Graphics that worked by taking pictures of the patterns made by the floating material in lava lamps, extracting random data from the pictures, and using the result to seed a pseudorandom number generator. [ 1]
Fortuna (PRNG) Fortuna is a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CS-PRNG) devised by Bruce Schneier and Niels Ferguson and published in 2003. It is named after Fortuna, the Roman goddess of chance. FreeBSD uses Fortuna for /dev/random and /dev/urandom is symbolically linked to it since FreeBSD 11. [1]
However, generally they are considerably slower (typically by a factor 2–10) than fast, non-cryptographic random number generators. These include: Stream ciphers. Popular choices are Salsa20 or ChaCha (often with the number of rounds reduced to 8 for speed), ISAAC, HC-128 and RC4. Block ciphers in counter mode.
A pseudorandom number generator ( PRNG ), also known as a deterministic random bit generator ( DRBG ), [ 1] is an algorithm for generating a sequence of numbers whose properties approximate the properties of sequences of random numbers. The PRNG-generated sequence is not truly random, because it is completely determined by an initial value ...
Randomness test. A randomness test (or test for randomness ), in data evaluation, is a test used to analyze the distribution of a set of data to see whether it can be described as random (patternless). In stochastic modeling, as in some computer simulations, the hoped-for randomness of potential input data can be verified, by a formal test for ...
Applications of randomness. Randomness has many uses in science, art, statistics, cryptography, gaming, gambling, and other fields. For example, random assignment in randomized controlled trials helps scientists to test hypotheses, and random numbers or pseudorandom numbers help video games such as video poker .