4 ms·
Came here to say this. I have spent a lot of time in hardware validation. Pseudo-random (explicitly NOT random) sequences are hugely useful. I once had a light
by dbcurtis 6y ago
Came here to say this. I have spent a lot of time in hardware validation. Pseudo-random (explicitly NOT random) sequences are hugely useful.
I once had a lights out server room of 60 servers whose entire purpose was to take skeletonized tests and a seed for a pseudo-random function and generate a test instance. That test instance went to one of a dozen test jigs. What was recorded was: pass/fail, the git sha of the template, and the seed. Any failing test could be reproduced at any time from just the git sha and the seed. True random would have killed that whole methodology.
- antonyh 6y agoThat sounds awesome, and the use of a repeatable random vital. Another example of random in a non-cryptography context where it's unpredictable under normal operation, but completely predictable when needed. If you wanted you could run the same test on all the test jigs with different seeds, safe in the knowledge that you could re-run all of them exactly again and again if required. Or you could add problematic seeds to a list for repeated retest with future versions. So much power and freedom!