> Hello to the list, > > ...I set up OpenBSD on a board with a (Soekris) Hifn 7955 > accelerator card, but the rate I'm getting by reading out of /dev/srandom > is pretty low (200B/s).
I am happily using VIA C3s for a project that requires high-quality entropy. In the industry I'm involved in, hardware random is de-rigeur. The VIA C3, using /dev/srandom, gives me somewhere right around 6KB/s. I was hoping for a higher rate, but we just ended up using multiple machines as a network random-number service (also yields fault-tolerance). In doing reading (but not of the acutal code), I remember having the distinct impression that /dev/srandom uses MD5 to "cook" the actual stream generated by the C3's on-die HRNG. You have to figure that it is compressing the stream. You may wish to look closely at the device driver code. There is quite a bit of very good data about the C3's HRNG available via google. One analysis of this HRNG made it clear that "cooking" may be redundant, given the right settings in the driver. I made the decision that the developers know what they're up to and left it at that. Hope this is helpful. -- Jack Bates Venice, CA, USA I play Texas Hold'Em at http://www.fulltiltpoker.com
