[erlang-questions] Re: Fastest pseudo-random number-generator: erlang:statistics(io) ?

[Zoltan Lajos Kis]

> On Nov 24, 11:20 pm, Dave Smith <diz...@REDACTED> wrote:
>> Off the top of my head, I have to wonder if using statistics(io) is
>> going to yield sufficient pseudo-randomness for load distribution
>> purposes. If you consider that most IO is likely to be a block size
>> modulo 8 (for efficiency) it seems like you might get a skewed
>> distribution. A simpler (and perhaps faster) approach would be to just
>> maintain a counter that gets atomically incremented on each call -- a
>> port driver or ETS table would suffice and have similar amounts of
>> contention as the call to statistics.
>
> Maintaining a counter in ETS would be (much) slower, so that is
> unfortunately no option for me. I have tried some simple randomness
> tests for this io-function in the running server and the distribution
> looks sufficiently random. I have many processes sending and receiving
> data (via ports), so that shouldn't be a problem. Someone else told me
> that erlang:now() blocks the scheduler shortly, so that is something I
> definitely want to avoid.
>
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>

How about process_info(self(), reductions). ?

Regards,
Zoltan.