randomness
Tom Libert
libert at citi.umich.edu
Sat Jan 30 08:19:07 PST 1993
For a cheap truly random number generator, bias a diode
near the switch voltage (around .7V for silicon, if my
hazy memory serves.) Take the result through an A/D
converter. Should be Gaussian (or Poisson, I forget);
you could generate a good approximation to a uniform
distribution by inverting the source function (see
e.g. Knuth, "Seminumerical Algorithms" for an algorithm
for producing Gaussian variates from a pair of numbers
drawn from a uniform distribution.)
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