Science & technology | Flipping heck!

How to generate better, cheaper, more abundant random numbers

And why that is important

RANDOMNESS IS A valuable commodity. Computer models of complex systems ranging from the weather to the stockmarket are voracious consumers of random numbers. Cryptography, too, relies heavily on random numbers for the generation of unbreakable keys. Better, cheaper ways of generating and handling such numbers are therefore always welcome. And doing just that is the goal of a project with the slightly tongue-in-cheek name of COINFLIPS, which allegedly stands for Co-designed Improved Neural Foundations Leveraging Inherent Physics Stochasticity.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Flipping heck!”

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