USB Block Erupters as RNG sources?

[Jim Bell]

From: d.nix <d.nix at comcast.net>
To: cypherpunks at cpunks.org; liberationtech at mailman.stanford.edu 
Sent: Thursday, October 3, 2013 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: USB Block Erupters as RNG sources?
 

> "Very little", and "no".  They're basically custom Bitcoin-mining
> ASICs, I looked at one a while back for use in password-cracking
>> and they're really not suited for it at all, you load a vector in
>> and say "go" but since they're quite I/O-limited you can't easily
>> adapt them for hash-breaking.  As for RNG use, they're entirely
>> deterministic, how would you use them as an RNG source?

>> at best you *might* be able twist it into a DRBG that would still
>> need to be seeded (and regularly reseeded) with robust entropy.
>> 
>> these ASICs really are single purpose; they're useless for anything
>> else.

>Thanks Peter, Coderman-
>Kinda what I suspected seeing as they are *Application Specific* IC's
>after all... Wishful thinking more than anything knowing that they are
>now saturating their market and loosing value rapidly.
>Cheers!
>DN

This looks like a decent idea for a RNG.          http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1434841111001713       
Another is:   http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=847868&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F81%2F18417%2F00847868
Yet another:   http://www.fdk.co.jp/cyber-e/pi_ic_rpg100.html
      Jim Bell
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