Simtec Entropy Key

I doubt me or my business happens to have any real, justifiable need for this now. But the enthusiastic geeky kid in me thinks this is super cool :)<p>Looks like it may be available by my birthday in a few months, maybe I'll suggest it if someone asks what to get me as a gift.

I made something like this myself a while ago, albeit much simpler, for some crazy project. Generated a couple of CDs of data in not very long - the RS232 link was the bootleneck.<p>A couple of good links for those that want to give it a try:<p><a href="http://robseward.com/misc/RNG2/" rel="nofollow">http://robseward.com/misc/RNG2/</a><p><a href="http://www.cryogenius.com/hardware/rng/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cryogenius.com/hardware/rng/</a><p>I lost track of the actual links that I used but it's all roughly the same principle. One of the links I lost track of had a paper describing how random avalanche noise is, had some favourable things to say.

If you want the real thing, get a beam splitter. I'm not naming names or really saying anything credible at all, but electronic noise isn't in the same ballpark.<p>These folks have them available for PCI and USB: <a href="http://www.idquantique.com/products/quantis.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.idquantique.com/products/quantis.htm</a><p>(no I'm not affiliated in any way)

Hmm. This might be a good way to deal with entropy starvation on VM guest OSes. Kind of a niche concern, but one I happen to have.

Can I expect real performance benefit for a single server that does some SSH and HTTPS transfers as well as encrypted filesystems?