On 04/08/2015 09:55 AM, scott wrote:
>>> I wonder how long before GPU gets a hardware-based randomness source?
>>> (It can't be that hard to sample a little thermal noise in hardware,
>>
>> Well, GPUs should at least be able to provide plenty thermal for the
>> noise ;)
>
> Yes :-) It's not hard to sample the thermal noise, the problem is how to
> sample it billions of times per second with enough resolution to be useful.

Well, no, you typically sample it a few times a second and use that to 
seed a normal PRNG.

In other news, Intel added an op-code to generate truly-random numbers 
using exactly this technique. The Linux kernel team added it to 
/dev/random... and then took it out again, because they were apparently 
concerned that the NSA would modify the die of your CPU to make the 
random numbers non-random. (!!)

Jesus, that's next-level. Surely if you don't trust the hardware your OS 
is running on, it's already game over. (?)

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