Andrea Pasquinucci wrote: > > http://www.idquantique.com/products/quantis.htm > > "Quantis is a physical random number generator exploiting an elementary > quantum optics process. Photons - light particles - are sent one by one > onto a semi-transparent mirror and detected. The exclusive events > (reflection - transmission) are associated to "0" - "1" bit values." > > Just curious of your opinion.
This is discussed at http://www.av8n.com/turbid/paper/turbid.htm#sec-hrng-attack Quantum processes are in some very narrow theoretical sense more "fundamentally" random than other sources of randomness, such as thermal noise ... but they are not better in any practical sense. The basic quantum process is less sensitive to temperature than a purely thermal process ... but temperature dependence is easily accounted for in any practical situation, and -- more importantly -- there are all sorts of other practical considerations (such as detector dead-time issues) that make real quantum detectors far from ideal. The devil is in the details, and obtaining the raw data from a quantum process is nowhere near necessary and nowhere near sufficient to make a good randomness generator. I have no idea whether the quantis generator got the devilish details right ... but in any case, there are easier ways to make a generator that is just as good, or better. For details, see http://www.av8n.com/turbid/paper/turbid.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
