> how about feeding a white noise signal into a microcontroller
Yeah, its a lot easier to make an RNG if someone already made one for you. How did you create the white-noise signal itself??
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The question is: where did the white-noise come from? And is there any physical way we can "prove" that the white-noise makes a good generator?
The simplest design (IMO anyway) is to start with the Shot Noise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_noise) that has been well documented in the NP-junction (NPN Transistors, Diodes, etc. etc). The simplest NP-junction is your standard diode... and then just measure the current that goes through that diode (especially if its backwards)
You can measure that current through a series of amplifiers: BJT Transistors to hone in on the noise and amplify it to measurable levels. Then use a microcontroller to read that.
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I'm no expert on hardware RNGs / white noise generators, but that's the kind of thinking you'd need to make one. You have to start with a principle source of noise, and then build a design to amplify that noise as cleanly as possible.
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The hypothesis of this "hackaday" post is that the bootup of uninitialized RAM is a true source of randomness. I'm inclined to believe it (at least, the experimental results show it is at least somewhat reliable), but I'm not 100% sure why.
A common way to handle this for non-cryptographic randomness without using any extra hardware is leave a pin floating that has an A/D converter on it and oversampling it to measure the lowest one or two bits.
Feeding in white noise though requires something to generate that white noise. When extra hardware is available you absolutely generate that noise and getting a higher quality and more reliable source of randomness.
Yeah, its a lot easier to make an RNG if someone already made one for you. How did you create the white-noise signal itself??
----------------
The question is: where did the white-noise come from? And is there any physical way we can "prove" that the white-noise makes a good generator?
The simplest design (IMO anyway) is to start with the Shot Noise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_noise) that has been well documented in the NP-junction (NPN Transistors, Diodes, etc. etc). The simplest NP-junction is your standard diode... and then just measure the current that goes through that diode (especially if its backwards)
You can measure that current through a series of amplifiers: BJT Transistors to hone in on the noise and amplify it to measurable levels. Then use a microcontroller to read that.
----------------
I'm no expert on hardware RNGs / white noise generators, but that's the kind of thinking you'd need to make one. You have to start with a principle source of noise, and then build a design to amplify that noise as cleanly as possible.
------------------
The hypothesis of this "hackaday" post is that the bootup of uninitialized RAM is a true source of randomness. I'm inclined to believe it (at least, the experimental results show it is at least somewhat reliable), but I'm not 100% sure why.