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This 500MB/s a merged stream when using all cores, I got like 140MB/s on one (from my answer in the SO thread you linked).

And I'm not ranting, I'm just crying over a lost opportunity. Nowadays you must spend time to think which PRNG to use and how to implement it to satisfy some quality/speed trade-off; an RNG (infinite cycle by design) directly connected to CPU (no transfer bottlenecks) that passes Die Hard (read random enough for science) would be a golden bullet.

Yes, PRNG makes RDRAND faster than its entropy source in its current design; but it is not hitting any wall. Intel engineers could made it way faster if they had focused on maximal throughput possible not just big enough for crypto.



> And I'm not ranting

Sorry if I offended you.

I'm still surprised that poses a challenge for your applications. I thought fast non-cryptographic RNGs were a solved problem. How much random data do you generate? If you use a significant amount of CPU just for that I doubt it would be feasible for Intel to build a cryptographically secure RNG with the same throughput without significant extra costs (think one extra core). (I'm no expert on that subject though.)




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