New /dev/random Implementation Hits 35th Revision

Going on for more than four years now has been creating a new /dev/random implementation and this Friday marks the 35th revision to this big set of patches that aim for better performance and security.

The code has been through many changes over the years for this new "Linux Random Number Generator" (LRNG).

This new /dev/random works even if the kernel API crypto is not compiled, hash operations are NUMA-node-local for better handling with large parallel systems, other types of DRNGs are supported, it's faster by up to 75% in a critical code path, and other performance advantages including faster entropy collection during boot including for SSD-backed systems and virtual machines.

Stephan Müller continues leading development of this new /dev/random implementation with the v35 patches having various code improvements and fixes. But as for if/when this new random number generator will be merged to the mainline Linux kernel remains to be seen. Those interested in more technical aspects of this work can see the mailing list series.