Re: Truly Random Numbers On A Quantum Computer??

On Sun, 30 Mar 2025 09:11:47 -0400 (EDT)
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Richard Kettlewell  <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:

Exactly! All the stuff about lava lamps, helium motion inside hard
disks, etc is just gimmicks. Real random numbers are tiny
electronic

                                                ^generators

components built into CPUs, HSMs, etc.

>
Strictly I should probably say “entropy sourcesâ€_, since there’s
generally a DRBG between the electronics and the application, as
well.

 
The problem with those genuine random number generators is that they
are usually comparatively slow.  They take milliseconds to spit out a
number, sometimes tens or even hundreds of them.  So we use the
genuine RNG to seed a PNG in situations where we don't need complete
randomness but need pretty good randomness and need a lot of it fast.
 Knuth has a discussion of this.
--scott

im no expert but can't you just amplify thermal (white) noise and just
sample it? it's completely random.