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Overloaded Memory Chips Generate Truly Random Numbers for Encryption


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A DRAM memory chip on a circuit board.

John Graham-Cumming at Cloudflare says randome numbers are "an essential part of any encrypted connection, such as when you bank online. But computers are entirely predictable and thus poor at creating random numbers, so a source of randomness...is an imp

Credit: B. Christopher/Alamy

Generating truly random numbers for cryptographic algorithms could become possible through Nisa Bostanci and colleagues at Turkey's TOBB University of Economics and Technology.

The researchers' system reduces interference between chip memory used to produce random numbers and memory used to run normal computer operations.

The system forecasts when memory will be used, and compiles an inventory of random numbers then.

Once the stockpile is depleted, it requests and prioritizes new random numbers in a line with other software tasks.

In 186 experiments, the system improved normal computer operational performance by 17.9% and random number generation by 25.1%, versus previous dynamic random-access memory random number-generating models.

From New Scientist
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Abstracts Copyright © 2022 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA


 

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