5 ms·
Mersenne Twister is the MD5 of random number generators: it's neither secure nor fast (and unlikely md5 not space-efficient, or simple to implement either). You
by patrec 6y ago
Mersenne Twister is the MD5 of random number generators: it's neither secure nor fast (and unlikely md5 not space-efficient, or simple to implement either). You can have something that has better randomness, runs several times faster, uses less space and has a much more compact and simple implementation.
So given that Mersenne Twister sucks in pretty much every possible way other than having a catchy name, likely the sole source of its continued popularity, its probably not a good choice for replacing some "default" random number generator with something better.
- MauranKilom 6y ago> You can have something that has better randomness, runs several times faster, uses less space and has a much more compact and simple implementation. Could you share at least one example of such a generator? Most of these aspects are trivial to improve on, but having "better randomness" on top is quite the bar.
- ChrisLomont 6y agoThe PCG class of PRNGs are very good, and have a zillion tunable versions to suit every need. https://www.pcg-random.org/index.html https://www.pcg-random.org/index.html
- sobriquet9 6y agoMCG 128 from http://www.pcg-random.org/posts/on-vignas-pcg-critique.html http://www.pcg-random.org/posts/on-vignas-pcg-critique.html or xoshiro256plus from http://prng.di.unimi.it/xoshiro256plus.c http://prng.di.unimi.it/xoshiro256plus.c
- patrec 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_Twister#Alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_Twister#Alternatives https://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/09/21/ https://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/09/21/ I don't think better randomness than MT is as high a bar as you make it out to be, both links above also briefly mention statistical shortcomings of MT.
- Khaine 6y agoDoesn't FreeBSD use Mersenne Twister as its CSRNG?