[Cryptography] Entropy of a diode

[Bill Cox]

I have not seen any papers on this, but I can tell you that if you buy a
regular zener diode, it will generate a disappointingly low amount of
noise, many times less than the reverse breakdown Vbe of a cheap
transistor.  Apparently, zener avalanche noise is highly dependent on the
process used, and if you tune the process to lessen avalanche noise, you
can eliminate most it.

Bill

On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 2:17 PM, Kurt Roeckx <kurt at roeckx.be> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to understand the entropy generated by a reversed diode
> in avalanche breakdown mode.  Does anybody know of a paper that
> describes it, maybe talk about the distribution of the noise, the
> effect of temperature changes, RF interference?
>
> I'm trying to analyze the chaoskey.
>
>
> Kurt
>
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