If no seed is supplied, the microsecond field of the TOD clock is used. It is surprising that virtual machines starting up could all be calling Random with the same TOD? It seems that there would HAVE to be at least a few digits changed in the first seed for random? JL
-----Original Message----- From: CMSTSO Pipelines Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bob Cronin Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 8:42 AM To: [email protected] Subject: How random is the random stage? If "n" virtual machines all running the same code all invoke a PIPE command that uses the random stage without a seed specified and they all do it at very nearly the same instant in time, will they all generate the same sequence of random numbers? I have evidence that suggests this is true (and if so, I need to come up with a scheme to add a seed that will be different for each virtual machine). -- bc
