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feat(examples): Add a useful set of high quality pseudo-random number generators #2868

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@wyhaines wyhaines commented Sep 28, 2024

I ported a number of my pseudo-random number generator implementations from Ruby to gno while traveling to the retreat last weekend as an exercise in expanding my comfort level with gno code, and expanding my understanding of some of the code internals, while contributing code that others may find interesting or useful.

I added two xorshift generators, xorshift64* and xorshiftr128+. These are both many times faster than the PCG generator that is the gno default, and produce high quality randomness with great statistical qualities. In addition to these, I added both the 32-bit ISAAC implementation (with an added function to return 64 bit values), and the 64-bit ISAAC implementation. ISAAC is a stellar pseudo-random number generator. Both implementations are significantly faster than PCG (though not near so fast as the xorshift algorithms), while producing extremely high quality, cryptographically secure randomness that can not be differentiated from real randomness.

All of these were built to be compatible with the standard Rand() implementation. This means that any of these can be used as a drop-in replacement for the default PCG algorithm:

source = isaac.New()
prng := rand.New(source)

All of these leverage the gno.land/p/demo/entropy package to assist with seeding if no seed is provided. In the case of the ISAAC algorithms, they require 256 uint values for their seed, so they leverage a combination of entropy and xorshiftr128+ to generate any missing numbers in the provided seed.

I also added a function to entropy to return uint64, to facilitate using it for seeding.

I added tests to entropy, and wrote tests for the other generators, as well.

There are a few other things that ended up in this PR. In order to make some fact based assertions about the performance of these generators, I included some code that can be ran via gno run -expr. i.e. gno run -expr 'averageISAAC()' isaac.gno that can be used to get some benchmarks and some very simple self-statistical-analysis on the results, and when I did so, I discovered that the current ufmt.Sprintf implementation didn't support any of the float output flags.

I added float support to it's capabilities, which, in turn, required adding FormatFloat to the strconv.gno/strconv.go implementation in the standard library. I added a test to cover this.

I also noticed that there is a test in tm2/pkg/p2p that is failing on both master and my branch. Specifically, there is a call to sw.Logger.Error() that passes a message and an error, but not "err" before the error. Adding that seemed to clear up the build failure. This, specifically, is line 222 of switch.go.

Currently there is one failing test, which is the code coverage check on tm2, because it is non-obvious to me how to setup a test to properly exercise that one changed line.

Contributors' checklist...
  • Added new tests, or not needed, or not feasible
  • Provided an example (e.g. screenshot) to aid review or the PR is self-explanatory
  • Updated the official documentation or not needed
  • No breaking changes were made, or a BREAKING CHANGE: xxx message was included in the description
  • Added references to related issues and PRs

@wyhaines wyhaines requested review from a team as code owners September 28, 2024 08:50
@wyhaines wyhaines requested review from jaekwon and thehowl and removed request for a team September 28, 2024 08:50
@github-actions github-actions bot added the 🧾 package/realm Tag used for new Realms or Packages. label Sep 28, 2024
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codecov bot commented Sep 28, 2024

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 63.30%. Comparing base (2873354) to head (1889a46).
Report is 2 commits behind head on master.

Additional details and impacted files
@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master    #2868      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   63.32%   63.30%   -0.02%     
==========================================
  Files         548      548              
  Lines       78511    78504       -7     
==========================================
- Hits        49715    49695      -20     
- Misses      25443    25454      +11     
- Partials     3353     3355       +2     
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contribs/gnodev 59.94% <ø> (ø)
contribs/gnofaucet 14.82% <ø> (ø)
gno.land 67.18% <ø> (ø)
misc/genstd 79.72% <ø> (ø)
tm2 62.33% <ø> (-0.10%) ⬇️

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@github-actions github-actions bot added the 📦 🤖 gnovm Issues or PRs gnovm related label Sep 28, 2024
@wyhaines wyhaines marked this pull request as draft October 1, 2024 00:32
@github-actions github-actions bot added the 📦 🌐 tendermint v2 Issues or PRs tm2 related label Oct 2, 2024
@wyhaines wyhaines marked this pull request as ready for review October 7, 2024 02:27
I ported a number of my pseudo-random number generator implementations from Ruby to Gno, building them be compatible with the standard Rand() implementation, so that any of these can be used as a drop-in replacement for the default PCG algorithm. All of these are faster than PCG, while still having competitive-to-superior statistical properties and predictability resistance. Further, the ISAAC family of generators are cryptographically secure, and when properly seeded, still have no known practical attack vectors.
@zivkovicmilos
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Hey @wyhaines, can you update the PR branch with the master branch? 🙏

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Just a couple of comments. I'm not particularly familiar with the algorithms involved here; I don't have the patience to check these against their source implementations and verify the claims there, so I kind of skimmed through the code without much of a critical eye on it.

I have two notes:

  • First, maybe @n2p5 can take a look - this looks like the kind of thing up his sleeve.
  • Second, maybe we can put this in a p/wyhaines namespace rather than a p/demo/math/rand namespace. I don't know what we want to do with p/demo long-term (keep it? move a lot of it to p/nt? ...), but for now I still consider it as a "semi-official" space, so I'd prefer your own namespace as a place where to have code that is not vetted by the core team ahead of time.

// prng = isaac.New() // pass 0 to 256 uint32 seeds; if fewer than 256 are provided, the rest
// // will be generated using the xorshiftr128plus PRNG.
//
// Or use it as a drop-in replacement for the default PRNT in Rand:
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Suggested change
// Or use it as a drop-in replacement for the default PRNT in Rand:
// Or use it as a drop-in replacement for the default PRNG in Rand:

// unbiased, and unpredictable number generation. It can not be distinguished from real random
// data, and in three decades of scrutiny, no practical attacks have been found.
//
// The default random number algorithm in gno was ported from Go's v2 rand implementatoon, which
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// The default random number algorithm in gno was ported from Go's v2 rand implementatoon, which
// The default random number algorithm in gno was ported from Go's v2 rand implementation, which

@thehowl thehowl requested review from n2p5 and removed request for deelawn November 6, 2024 21:09
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