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by mmalone 3870 days ago
MT only fails LinearComp systematically. It is not a bad generator, it is a very good generator. The biggest problem is the "escape from zero-land" stuff where it's biased towards zero for a while if its seed is mostly zeros, but other generators have the same problem (though not to the same extent) and it's still statistically very unlikely to be a problem and it self corrects as the sequence runs.

Comparing to ChaCha20, which is a CSPRNG, is a little apples/oranges.
1 comments
acqq 3870 days ago
The author (or authors?) of MT have some more recent generators that are faster, what's the reason for staying with the original MT?
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mmalone 3870 days ago
Just familiarity. Mostly I just can't recommend something I don't know much about. The SIMD variant of MT is architecture specific, I thought? Other newer variants of MT/WELL generators and PCG are probably all good options. Also xorshift*.

But I know that MT is a very good algorithm and using it has a certain pragmatic appeal - you make a lot of people's lives easier because when they Google to learn more about your generator they'll find good information quickly.

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