Mersenne Twister [SEP] time of discovery
Mersenne Twister
The Mersenne Twister is a pseudorandom number generator (PRNG). It is by far the most widely used general-purpose PRNG. Its name derives from the fact that its period length is chosen to be a Mersenne prime.
The Mersenne Twister was developed in 1997 by and . It was designed specifically to rectify most of the flaws found in older PRNGs.
The most commonly used version of the Mersenne Twister algorithm is based on the Mersenne prime 2−1. The standard implementation of that, MT19937, uses
, a significant decrease compared to the original's 2.5 KiB of state. However, it has a period of 2−1, far shorter than the original, so it is only recommended by the authors in cases where memory is at a premium.
External links.
- The academic paper for MT, and related articles by Makoto Matsumoto
- Mersenne Twister home page, with codes in C, Fortran, Java, Lisp and some other languages
- Mersenne Twister examples —a collection of Mersenne Twister implementations, in several