[sdiy] analog loses another niche

[Tim Parkhurst]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Tom Corbitt <tom.corbitt at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/intel-makes-a-digital-coin-tosser-for-future-processors
>
> ”Historically, RNGs have been analog,” says Greg Taylor, director of
> the Circuit Research Lab. ”But porting to smaller technology nodes
> [with analog devices] requires a lot of fine-tuning that is
> unnecessary with digital versions.”
>
> Be interesting to see how they rigged the metastability to be a 50/50 shot.
>
>
> Tom "And I, for one, welcome our new randomly digital overlords" Corbitt

Rather than being "difficult to miniaturize" as stated in the article,
I'm thinking the problem with the typical analog noise source is the
low supply voltages used in newer chips. Your average transistor noise
source relies on higher voltages to create avalanche noise, and from
what I've seen, they are difficult to make work at much below 9 Volts
or so. Otherwise, I can't see that a few transistors and a gain stage
or two would be that difficult to add to a modern chip. I could be
wrong though.


Tim (voted 'Most likely to be a noise source' in High School) Servo
-- 
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