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From: aboulang@bbn.com (Albert Boulanger)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.electronics
Subject: A TRUE (not pseudo) random number Chip by AT&T (T7001)
Message-ID: <50497@bbn.COM>
Date: 6 Jan 90 22:16:24 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: aboulanger@bbn.com
Lines: 21


I noticed the spec sheet for this little guy in the Sams book "Video
Scrambling & Descrambling" Rudolf Graf, & William Sheets. The specs
for this chip say that it produces TRULY random bits based on the
phase jitter of a free-running oscillator. It is a companion chip to
AT&T's T7000A DES chip.

Is there any analysis of the quality of the random numbers based on
the technology used in this chip? I have been thinking of a similar
idea but based on XORING a bank of free running oscillators (which is
in turn based on a simple asynchronous random sequence algorithm I
have been playing with for MIMD machines). Is there some general
analysis and description of this generic class of methods for
producing random sequences?



Inquiringly yours,
Albert Boulanger
BBN Systems & Technologies Corp.
aboulanger@bbn.com