2 ms·
I don’t know the history, and I agree it would be fascinating to hear from someone who does — but the fact that we call it a “shift register” strongly suggests
by NobodyNada 5y ago
I don’t know the history, and I agree it would be fascinating to hear from someone who does — but the fact that we call it a “shift register” strongly suggests it was implemented in hardware first, because “shift register” is usually a hardware term rather than a software term.
The earliest example of an LFSR I’ve seen is the Nintendo Entertainment System’s white noise generator, implemented in hardware. But many NES games used software LFSRs to generate random numbers for gameplay, so the trick was probably long-established and well-known at that time.
- kens 5y agoI don't know the full history, but a bit of searching shows that linear feedback shift registers were in use in the 1960s, so it's a pretty old technology.
- pvitz 5y agoIt's not about how old the technology is, but from when on it wasn't used as e.g. a pseudo-RNG, but rather for storing data. So, formally, still a RNG, but using a special seed to get a sequence that is equal to the data that one wants to store. I have found that "River Raid" (1982) and "The Sentinel" (1986) were using it for game data. Apparently, the original "Elite" was supposed to use one, too, but they decided against it.