Micro-LEDs boost random number generation

Anybody have input on why this isn't a "Paper Tiger"?

I usually stick to lava lamps

Lava lamps have been deprecated, Lava LEDs are the new standard

My first question would be whether it's possible to influence the output via triggering power fluctuations on the motherboard - e.g. by running expensive code to cause the CPU/GPU to scale up.

Fender amps here

Probably not. It's hard to guess, but they probably get a Poison Distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution in the detector, they may read only a few of the lower bits of the data, and then mix them in the entropy pool, with other sources. So the end result is quite unpredictable.

It's somehow similar to a random generator where you have 5 dices, roll them and then add to the entropy pool only if the total was even or odd. Changing the power is like forcing the system to use only 4 dices. It changes the probabilities a little, but not in a very controlable way, and with a good mixing in the entropy pool it's almost irrelevant.

Why would it be?

Only useful for random numbers up to 11 though.

I read the actual open access paper: https://opg.optica.org/oe/viewmedia.cfm?uri=oe-33-11-22154&s...

Note if you look at the paper, you notice a close but not entirely perfect normal distribution, but nothing you cannot fix with UDNs and Irwin-Hall. For reference how that is done you can read the bottom of this very useful RNG article: https://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/RP2040/C...

My overall verdict on the tech in OP is that it is amazingly promising!

Can someone explain to me how this is different than a simple noise generator based on a PN junction? As in, isn't this just amplifying noise and aren't there less sensational ways of doing nearly the same thing? Does measuring a photon with this method actually get you better randomness? I have some serious gaps in my understanding here and an ELI5 would be neat.

Measuring photons in this manner gives you the best randomness. It is effectively a quantum technique. A PN junction is (mostly) classical.

The specific mechanism is mentioned in the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_emission

> Although there is only one electronic transition from the excited state to ground state, there are many ways in which the electromagnetic field may go from the ground state to a one-photon state. That is, the electromagnetic field has infinitely more degrees of freedom, corresponding to the different directions in which the photon can be emitted. Equivalently, one might say that the phase space offered by the electromagnetic field is infinitely larger than that offered by the atom. This infinite degree of freedom for the emission of the photon results in the apparent irreversible decay, i.e., spontaneous emission.

The question is whether quantum mechanical noise could have a conceivable advantage over classical noise. I strongly suspect: no. Classical noise is already factually unpredictable, so the theoretical unpredictability (assuming no hidden variable theories I guess) of quantum noise doesn't add anything.

Only a few Fender amps have good noise with the 5C1 wide panel Champ being king and the 5F1 narrow panel Champ being a close second. Silvertones beat them out but there is too much noise for most.

I am not surprised, as most things that generate light are generating photons using quantum effects, and thus are true random. Furthermore, CCD and CMOS detectors themselves have a quantum efficiency less than 100%, meaning they only detect a fraction of the incoming photons at random. So, a regular light bulb in front of a webcam is already a quite high-bandwidth source of true random numbers.

So, there is nothing revolutionary going on there, this paper is more about how to build a system with micro-LEDs and a photodetector and how to remove any inherent biases in that system, with the obvious benefit of being able to make something very compact.