Re: [BUG] perf: bogus correlation of kernel symbols

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>]

* Ray Lee <ray-lk@madrabbit.org> wrote:

> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:49 AM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
> > Well, since entropy does not get reduced on addition of independent variables
> > the right sequence is (pseudocode):
> >
> >        rnd  = entropy_cycles();
> >        rnd += entropy_rdrand();
> >        rnd += entropy_RTC();
> >        rnd += entropy_system();
> 
> I think you mean concatenation rather than addition? Or perhaps XOR, or a 
> hash? [...]

Yeah.

In this special case probably concatenation works the best: the above 4 random 
variables have total randomness probably less than 32 bits, so we want to 
create 4 tight random numbers and concatenate them.

[ XOR would destroy some fair amount of entropy because most of these random 
  variables have their randomness in their low bits, and a hash would probably
  lose about 2 bits and would also be slower. A hash would probably be safer
  and more robust though, if we mis-identify any of the random variables. ]

Thanks,

	Ingo