mark@decwrl.dec.com (Mark G. Johnson) (08/02/89)
There's an article in a recent journal that might be of interest: "Cellular Automata-Based Pseudorandom Number Generators for Built-In Self-Test", IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, Vol. 8 No. 8, August 1989, pp. 842-859. The technique produces a parallel *word* of random bits once per clock tick, unlike the Linear-Feedback Shift Register which produces a serial bitstream, one bit per clock tick. A major drawback of the LFSR is the rather high auto- and cross-correlation in the stream of pseudorandoms; the Cellular Automaton approach seems to improve this dramatically. Knuth's tests for randomness are applied and the results are favorable. -- -- Mark Johnson MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 ...!decwrl!mips!mark (408) 991-0208