On Dec 20, 2009, at 17:41 , Peter Pearson wrote: > On Sun, 20 Dec 2009 07:26:03 +1100, Lie Ryan <lie.1...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On 12/20/2009 4:02 AM, Carl Johan Rehn wrote: >> >>>>>> Parallel PRNGs are an unsolved problem in computer science. >>> >>> Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. I had no idea. This means >>> that if I want to speed up my application I have to go for the fastest >>> random generator and focus on other parts of my code that can be >>> vectorized. >> >> If you don't care about "repeatability" (which is already extremely >> difficult in parallel processing even without random number generators), >> you can just start two PRNG at two distinct states (and probably from >> two different algorithms) and they will each spews out two independent >> streams of random numbers. What was "unsolved" was the "pseudo-" part of >> the random number generation, which guarantee perfect replayability in >> all conditions. > > Why not use a good cipher, such as AES, to generate a pseudorandom > bit stream by encrypting successive integers?
Isn't the Fortuna PRNG based around that approximate concept? ------------- Rami Chowdhury "Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice." -- Hanlon's Razor 408-597-7068 (US) / 07875-841-046 (UK) / 0189-245544 (BD) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list