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Comment by n00b101 | Hacker News Reader

a monolithically integrated QRNG, composed of a light emitting diode (LED) and a single-photon avalanche photodetector (SPAD), has been recently demonstrated at 1 Mb/s using silicon (Si) photonics technology

For 32-bit integers, 1 million bits per second is equivalent to 31,250 random integer samples per second.

For comparison, a Mersenne Twister on GPU can generate 2.9 billion samples per second and on FPGA it can generate 26 billion samples per second [1]. One can only imagine what a custom ASIC would be able to do.

So the current quantum chip RNG is roughly 100,000 times slower than GPU and a million times slower than an FPGA.

I realize that the purpose of this QRNG is cryptographically secure RNG and Mersenne Twister is not for that purpose, but I was just curious about the performance.

[1] http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/slig/papers/tian_AHS09.pdf

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An mt requires reading only 400ish numbers to work out its internal state and exactly predict its output thereafter. its also biased, which puts bias into any simulation using it.

one of the best performance hwrngs atm comes in the raspberry pi.

one of the worse is that used by (old versions of)ms excel. which im still not sure if they fixed the high probability of creating extreme values.

if you need performance one of the best algorithmic pseudo rngs is in the rabbit stream cipher.

____ quantum random number generator would scare me. whats to stop the nsa from entangling it with their own hardware and controling its output (only half joking)

About the half serious part, I don't think that an entangled RNG could transmit any information.

ever since the Chinese published that they can now use entanglent to transmit information faster than light. following it up with that quantum comms satelite recently im not sure what to think anymore.

surely a better answer is "we dont actually know anymore"

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601658/first-demonstratio...

Your summation is not true; all they've claimed to have done is create a quantum encryption link, which means that if someone tries to eavesdrop on it, it will garble the message for both recipients.

There is no FTL communication.

thats isnt how the project was billed.

the first part of the project is quantum encryption. the second is ftl communication https://www.rt.com/news/328988-china-quantum-info-teleport/

The satellite’s first mission would involve establishing a cryptographic communication line between Beijing and Vienna by creating “[the encoding and sharing of a secret cryptographic key using the quantum properties of photons] between a ground station in Beijing and the satellite, and between the satellite and Vienna.”

Scientists then plan to conduct satellite entangled photon quantum teleportation between stations located in the Chinese cities of Delingha and Lijiang or Nanshan, which are separated by more than 1,200 kilometers.

____

following the ftl publications in 2013 Spooky! Quantum Action Is 10,000 Times Faster Than Light http://www.livescience.com/27920-quantum-action-faster-than-...

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