Science Daily is reporting that a German team has developed a new method of random number generation that they hope will improve security. "The German team has now developed a true random number generator that uses an extra layer of randomness by making a computer memory element, a flip-flop, twitch randomly between its two states 1 or 0. Immediately prior to the switch, the flip-flop is in a 'metastable state' where its behavior cannot be predicted. At the end of the metastable state, the contents of the memory are purely random. The researchers' experiments with an array of flip-flop units show that for small arrays the extra layer makes the random number almost twenty times more 'random' than conventional methods."

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