Toshiba shows 2Mbps hardware RNG

[Peter Gutmann]

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry at piermont.com> writes:

>EE Times: Toshiba tips random-number generator IC
>
>   SAN FRANCISCO -- Toshiba Corp. has claimed a major breakthrough in
>   the field of security technology: It has devised the world's
>   highest-performance physical random-number generator (RNG)
>   circuit.
>
>   The device generates random numbers at a data rate of 2.0 megabits
>   a second, according to Toshiba in a paper presented at the
>   International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) here.

I've always wondered why RNG speed is such a big deal for anything but a few
highly specialised applications.  For security use you've got two options:

1. Use it with standard security protocols, in which case you need all of 128
   or so bits every now and then (and very rarely a few thousand bits for
   asymmetric keygen).

2. Use it at its full data rate, in which case you can only communicate with
   someone else who has the same device, but more importantly you need to
   design and build your own custom security infrastructure to take advantage
   of the high-data-rate randomness, which is much harder than simply
   designing an RNG device and declaring victory.

   (In any case if you really need high-data-rate randomness, you just take
   your initial 128 bits and use it to seed AES in CTR mode).

So your potential market for this is people running Monte Carlo simulations
who don't like PRNGs.  Seems a bit of a limited market...

Peter.

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