A system call for random numbers: getrandom()
A system call for random numbers: getrandom()
Posted Jul 31, 2014 7:41 UTC (Thu) by eternaleye (guest, #67051)In reply to: A system call for random numbers: getrandom() by lordsutch
Parent article: A system call for random numbers: getrandom()
There's also that the kernel's random number generator is intended to be cryptographic randomness; this is considerably more stringent (and slower, and more computationally expensive) than the statistical randomness needed for Monte Carlo &co. So it's just plain less useful than alternatives like WELL[1] or xorshift+[2]
In addition, it depletes the scarce entropy resources of the kernel by the truckload, which may cause things that _really_ need good cryptographic randomness (long-term public keys, etc) to block indefinitely on /dev/random (since while urandom doesn't block, it _depletes the same pool_ causing random to block).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_Equidistributed_Long-p...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xorshift