The first random quantum processor unit

Yes, surprisingly enough, the term “quantum” is used for an actual product, which does not include mattresses, ointments, or wristbands. This time it is real and amazing.

QRNG

the device, Released by Quside (Kota, 5th grade) is a random number generator, which is very simple according to GPTChat:

import random
# gera um inteiro aleatório entre 1 e 1 milhão
random_number = random.randint(1, 1000000)
print(random_number)

In practice, it is not so simple, and random numbers are very important. They are used all the time in encryption, every page you go to on the internet relies on random numbers to maintain a secure connection, and when that isn’t possible, bad things happen.

In World War II, several Nazi bugs helped the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park. On one occasion he always used a German radio operator his girlfriend’s name, “Cillie”, to initialize the front panels of the Enigma machine. When they intercepted messages from him, they were decoded faster.

On another occasion, the operator sent a long message, and the other side reported that it was broken. Instead of rewriting the message using a new encryption key chosen from today’s table, the slow tedesco retransmitted the same message without changing the keys.

As expected from Enigma, it turned the text into something completely different from the previous version, but since the keys didn’t change, this gave the Brits a gateway into the Enigma spinner settings.

People imagine computers made it easy to generate random numbers, and that’s true of our daily lives, but not everything https closes the connection to xvideos. Spies and the military rely on advanced encryption, and nerds at the NSA feast on our everyday encryption.

Even a random thing like a dice or a coin isn’t really random, differences in shape and weight will create statistical weights that will eventually generate a usable pattern for the cryptographer.

Being a truly random generator it can generate a pattern for a while. It is the nature of random values. Most people don’t understand that it’s entirely possible to land on their head 10 times in a row, and it’s just not likely. Apple ran into trouble with this when it introduced shuffle play on the iPod.

People started complaining that some tracks were being played multiple times, and in some cases the iPod was playing the same track twice in a row. The programmers protested, explaining that there was nothing wrong, it was normal to choose randomly.

Steve Jobs wrote code to avoid playing the same track, and to normalize “random” distribution.

Perhaps the most advanced encryption system of World War II was SIGSALY, a 50-ton monster, running 40 racks and consuming 30 kilowatts, with the sole function of encoding audio transmissions in real time.

The bug compressed the signal, manipulated the harmonics and shuffled everything using a random noise source generated by recording the oscillations of mercury vapor tubes. The signals were recorded on vinyl discs, which were then distributed to the various parties.

Here you can see ticks very well. (Credit: DOD/Public Domain)

The disk boot point was specified, then both sides were synced (unlike the other settings). Even today, this encryption would be difficult, perhaps impossible to break.

About a dozen stations were built, if only used by high-ranking people, such as Churchill, MacArthur and possibly operators who were out of work when there was no senior man on the line.

In the Cold War, the United States was shooting all over the place looking for sources of really random numbers. Some systems have used discs with random noise from microwave radiation from the background galaxy, picked up by radio telescopes.

Even nowadays creative methods are used in searching for random numbers. Cloudflare uses a wall of lava lamps, this comic decor is from the 60’s/70’s, with a glycerin and alcohol heat lamp. The glycerin melts, forming a bubble, which bursts at a random moment, rises, cools, descends, and the process repeats.

A camera monitors each bulb, noting the events and extracting random numbers from them.

This is necessary because the random number generators in most programming languages ​​are so weak that they are called pseudo random number generators.

The characteristics of each individual chip, each CPU/RAM, chipset configuration all contribute to creating standards that make random numbers predictable (for the likes of NSA and KGB of course).

Even outside of espionage, biased random numbers can be harmful. Stochastic applications, which depend on random factors, such as stock market algorithms, Monte Carlo simulations or atmospheric interference modelling, can be negatively affected by a bad random data set.

Quantum Random Number Generators, QRNGs, make use of the uncertainty principle to produce numbers and, as incredible as it may sound, is very simple.

Quantum phenomena are inherently random. Statistically, we know that if you leave one kilogram of uranium-235 in the drawer, when you come back in 700 million years, half of it will have turned into lead. This is very easy to predict. What is impossible is to determine the time at which a single atom will undergo radioactive decay by emitting energy.

Be careful when buying your uranium! (credit: clone internet)

A simple Geiger counter pointing to a sample of radioactive material is an excellent random number generator. There are also methods that use noise from diodes and transistors, interference from lasers (in Quside’s case), and other exotic methods.

QN100 chipset, a quantum random generator (Credit: Quside)

The most difficult thing is to filter out random noise from a quantum source, which is very weak, from other, much stronger signals, which can be mistaken for quantum data.

There is also the speed factor. According to Jose Martinez, chief scientist at Qusid,

“Pseudo-random number generation subroutines can contain up to 50% of the total computational resources of a random workload”

With QRNG, the promise is 10 times faster performance than methods using discrete, non-quantum CPUs and up to 20 times less power consumption.

If the game delivers what it promises, it will make the Internet more secure, and it will make many applications more efficient. Or not, but that is the nature of quantum things.