[Cryptography] Thoughts on hardware randomness sources

[Jerry Leichter]

On Sep 12, 2013, at 11:06 PM, Marcus D. Leech wrote:
> There are a class of hyper-cheap USB audio dongles with very uncomplicated mixer models.  A small flotilla of those might get you some fault-tolerance.
>  My main thought on such things relates to servers, where power consumption isn't really much of an issue....
I'm not sure what servers you're talking about here.

If by server you mean one of those things in a rack at Amazon or Google or Rackspace - power consumption, and its consequence, cooling - is *the* major issue these days.  Also, the servers used in such data centers don't have multiple free USB inputs - they may not have any.

If by server you mean some quite low-power box in someone's home ... power is again an issue.  People want these things small, fan-free, and dead reliable.  And they are increasingly aware of the electric bills always-on devices produce.

About the only "server" for which power is not an issue is one of those extra-large desktops that small businesses use.

                                                        -- Jerry