xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/prng.9 (revision 06c3fb2749bda94cb5201f81ffdb8fa6c3161b2e)
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25.Dd August 5, 2020
26.Dt PRNG 9
27.Os
28.Sh NAME
29.Nm prng
30.Nd "Kernel pseudo-random number generators"
31.Sh SYNOPSIS
32.In sys/prng.h
33.Ft uint32_t
34.Fn prng32 void
35.Ft uint32_t
36.Fn prng32_bounded "uint32_t bound"
37.Ft uint64_t
38.Fn prng64 void
39.Ft uint64_t
40.Fn prng64_bounded "uint64_t bound"
41.Sh DESCRIPTION
42.Ss GENERIC PRNG ROUTINES
43.Nm
44is a family of fast,
45.Em non-cryptographic
46pseudo-random number generators.
47Unlike
48.Xr random 9 ,
49.Fn prng32 ,
50.Fn prng32_bounded ,
51.Fn prng64 ,
52and
53.Fn prng64_bounded
54avoid shared global state, removing unnecessary contention on SMP
55systems.
56The routines are not explicitly tied to any specific implementation, and
57may produce different specific sequences on different hosts, reboots, or
58versions of
59.Fx .
60Different CPUs in SMP systems are guaranteed to produce different sequences of
61integers.
62.Pp
63For
64.Em cryptographically secure
65random numbers generated by the
66.Xr random 4
67kernel cryptographically secure random number generator subsystem, see
68.Xr arc4random 9 .
69.Bl -tag -width indent
70.It Fn prng32
71Generate a 32-bit integer uniformly distributed in [0, 2^32-1].
72.It Fn prng32_bounded bound
73Generate an integer uniformly in the range [0, bound-1].
74.It Fn prng64
75Generate a 64-bit integer uniformly distributed in [0, 2^64-1].
76.It Fn prng64_bounded bound
77Generate an integer uniformly in the range [0, bound-1].
78.El
79.Pp
80These routines are not reentrant; they are not safe to use in interrupt
81handlers ("interrupt filters" in
82.Xr bus_setup_intr 9
83terminology).
84They are safe to use in all other kernel contexts, including interrupt threads
85("ithreads").
86.Ss REPRODUCIBLE PRNG APIS
87In addition to these per-CPU helpers, the
88.In sys/prng.h
89header also exposes the entire API of the PCG family of PRNGs as inline
90functions.
91The PCG-C API is described in full at
92.Lk https://www.pcg-random.org/using-pcg-c.html .
93.Sh HISTORY
94.Nm
95was introduced in
96.Fx 13 .
97