radiokoala wrote:are those million values derived from a mathematical formula? You surely do not store them in flash memory I assume!
No, definitely not stored in memory
Actually they are generated quite simply, just by a multiplication and an addition! That's how all MI modules generate randomness. You take the previous random value you computed, you add a certain big number M to it, then you multiply by another big number N, and finally you take the result modulo a certain number P (this last step is done automatically by integer overflow). It may not seem like it, but if you choose M, N and P wisely, the series of numbers, between 0 and P, that you get by successively adding and multiplying will not be very discernable from random numbers by a human.
Three things to note: 1/ it's good enough to give a flavor of "randomness", and certainly good enough for the purpose of generating random CV (you wil *not* hear any difference with "real" or "analog" randomness), but it will be terrible for other purposes, such as encryption (it will be much too easy for a computer to guess how the series has been computed, and therefore predict the next number in the series). 2/ since it is deterministic (same start number = same series), it means that you will get the exact same series of numbers each time you turn your system on (with some caveats); yet, a minor variation of the input (a user turns a knob for instance) might trigger a computation of the next number at a random time, and change the course of the series drastically. That's almost the definition of a chaotic system : it's hard to predict (by a human in our case), and it's very dependent of initial conditions (someone interacting with the system).
3/ EDIT: if you start you system with an initial value of 42 for instance, compute 1000 numbers in the series and end up on 42 again, it means that you will start again the same series of 1000 numbers over and over again: there will be a repetition. That's inevitable but there are clever ways to choose M and N such that it will take millions of computations to end up in a loop like this. And a loop of a million numbers will certainly not be a problem to record your hours of wiggling
I got carried away, but does this answer your question?
The random number generator is rather primitive, but will still produce a good million values before repeating itself.
Sure does!
I was. Thanks a ton!!
