cvs commit: src/sys/modules/random Makefile src/sys/dev/random randomdev.h randomdev_soft.c randomdev_soft.h yar

[Mike Silbersack]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> I therefore think that we should retain a crypto/yarrow afterburner
> on all random sources, but it may make sense to have offer different
> grades of random bits for performance reasons.
>
> --
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20

One thing that might make sense is to rename + wrap arc4random.  In
the TCP stack, we use arc4random because it's fast and good enough, not
because RC4 has some particular importance.  Therefore, if we instead
called arc4random fast_random, Mark could feed minimally processed
hardware entropy sources to fast_random, bypassing RC4 totally.

However, the question I have is this:  Is the C3's hardware PRNG actually
faster than RC4 by a margin significant enough to make such an
optimization worthwhile?

Mike "Silby" Silbersack