If I want to calculate the CRC32 value for a large number of consecutive zero bytes, is there a constant time formula I can use given the length of the run of zeros? For example, if I know I have 1000 bytes all filled with zeros, is there a way to avoid a loop with 1000 iterations (just an example, actual number of zeros is unbounded for the sake of this question)?
You can compute the result of applying n zeros not in O(1) time, but in O(log n) time. This is done in zlib's crc32_combine(). A binary matrix is constructed that represents the operation of applying a single zero bit to the CRC. The 32x32 matrix multiplies the 32-bit CRC over GF(2), where addition is replaced by exclusive-or (^) and multiplication is replaced by and (&), bit by bit.
Then that matrix can be squared to get the operator for two zeros. That is squared to get the operator for four zeros. The third one is squared to get the operator for eight zeros. And so on as needed.
Now that set of operators can be applied to the CRC based on the one bits in the number n of zero bits that you want to compute the CRC of.
You can precompute the resulting matrix operator for any number of zero bits, if you happen to know you will be frequently applying exactly that many zeros. Then it is just one matrix multiplication by a vector, which is in fact O(1).
You do not need to use the pclmulqdq instruction suggested in another answer here, but that would be a little faster if you have it. It would not change the O() of the operation.
Time complexity can be reduced to O(1) using a table lookup followed by a multiply. The explanation and example code are shown in the third section of this answer.
If the 1000 is a constant, a precomputed table of 32 values, each representing
each bit of a CRC to 8000th power mod poly could be used. A set of matrices (one set per byte of the CRC) could be used to work with a byte at a time. Both methods would be constant time (fixed number of loops) O(1).
As commented above, if the 1000 is not a constant, then exponentiation by squaring could be used which would be O(log2(n)) time complexity, or a combination of precomputed tables for some constant number of zero bits, such as 256, followed by exponentiation by squaring could be used so that the final step would be O(log2(n%256)).
Optimization in general: for normal data with zero and non-zero elements, on an modern X86 with pclmulqdq (uses xmm registers), a fast crc32 (or crc16) can be implemented, although it's close to 500 lines of assembly code. Intel document: crc using pclmulqdq. Example source code for github fast crc16. For a 32 bit CRC, a different set of constants is needed. If interested, I converted the source code to work with Visual Studio ML64.EXE (64 bit MASM), and created examples for both left and right shift 32 bit CRC's, each with two sets of constants for the two most popular CRC 32 bit polynomials (left shift polys: crc32:0x104C11DB7 and crc32c: 0x11EDC6F41, right shift poly's are bit reversed).
Example code for fast adjustment of CRC using a software based carryless multiply modulo the CRC polyonomial. This will be much faster than using a 32 x 32 matrix multiply. A CRC is calculated for non-zero data: crf = GenCrc(msg, ...). An adjustment constant is calculated for n zero bytes: pmc = pow(2^(8*n))%poly (using exponentiation by repeated squaring). Then the CRC is adjusted for the zero bytes: crf = (crf*pmc)%poly.
Note that time complexity can be reduced to O(1) with generation of a table of pow(2^(8*i))%poly constants for i = 1 to n. Then the calculation is a table lookup and a fixed iteration (32 cycles) multiply % poly.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
typedef unsigned char uint8_t;
typedef unsigned int uint32_t;
static uint32_t crctbl[256];
void GenTbl(void) /* generate crc table */
{
uint32_t crc;
uint32_t c;
uint32_t i;
for(c = 0; c < 0x100; c++){
crc = c<<24;
for(i = 0; i < 8; i++)
crc = (crc<<1)^((0-(crc>>31))&0x04c11db7);
crctbl[c] = crc;
}
}
uint32_t GenCrc(uint8_t * bfr, size_t size) /* generate crc */
{
uint32_t crc = 0u;
while(size--)
crc = (crc<<8)^crctbl[(crc>>24)^*bfr++];
return(crc);
}
/* carryless multiply modulo crc */
uint32_t MpyModCrc(uint32_t a, uint32_t b) /* (a*b)%crc */
{
uint32_t pd = 0;
uint32_t i;
for(i = 0; i < 32; i++){
pd = (pd<<1)^((0-(pd>>31))&0x04c11db7u);
pd ^= (0-(b>>31))&a;
b <<= 1;
}
return pd;
}
/* exponentiate by repeated squaring modulo crc */
uint32_t PowModCrc(uint32_t p) /* pow(2,p)%crc */
{
uint32_t prd = 0x1u; /* current product */
uint32_t sqr = 0x2u; /* current square */
while(p){
if(p&1)
prd = MpyModCrc(prd, sqr);
sqr = MpyModCrc(sqr, sqr);
p >>= 1;
}
return prd;
}
/* # data bytes */
#define DAT ( 32)
/* # zero bytes */
#define PAD (992)
/* DATA+PAD */
#define CNT (1024)
int main()
{
uint32_t pmc;
uint32_t crc;
uint32_t crf;
uint32_t i;
uint8_t *msg = malloc(CNT);
for(i = 0; i < DAT; i++) /* generate msg */
msg[i] = (uint8_t)rand();
for( ; i < CNT; i++)
msg[i] = 0;
GenTbl(); /* generate crc table */
crc = GenCrc(msg, CNT); /* generate crc normally */
crf = GenCrc(msg, DAT); /* generate crc for data */
pmc = PowModCrc(PAD*8); /* pmc = pow(2,PAD*8)%crc */
crf = MpyModCrc(crf, pmc); /* crf = (crf*pmc)%crc */
printf("%08x %08x\n", crc, crf); /* crf == crc */
free(msg);
return 0;
}
CRC32 is based on multiplication in GF(2)[X] modulo some polynomial, which is multiplicative. Tricky part is splitting the non-multiplicative from the multiplicative.
First define a sparse file with the following structure (in Go):
type SparseFile struct {
FileBytes []SparseByte
Size uint64
}
type SparseByte struct {
Position uint64
Value byte
}
In your case it would be SparseFile{[]FileByte{}, 1000}
Then, the function would be:
func IEEESparse (file SparseFile) uint32 {
position2Index := map[uint64]int{}
for i , v := range(file.FileBytes) {
file.FileBytes[i].Value = bits.Reverse8(v.Value)
position2Index[v.Position] = i
}
for i := 0; i < 4; i++ {
index, ok := position2Index[uint64(i)]
if !ok {
file.FileBytes = append(file.FileBytes, SparseByte{Position: uint64(i), Value: 0xFF})
} else {
file.FileBytes[index].Value ^= 0xFF
}
}
// Add padding
file.Size += 4
newReminder := bits.Reverse32(reminderIEEESparse(file))
return newReminder ^ 0xFFFFFFFF
}
So note that:
Division is performed on bits in the opposite order (per byte).
First four bytes are xored with 0xFF.
File is padded with 4 bytes.
Reminder is reversed again.
Reminder is xored again.
The inner function reminderIEEESparse is the true reminder and it is easy to implement it in O(log n) where n is the size of the file.
You can find a full implementation here.
Related
Are the traditional Fletcher/Adler checksum algorithms optimal?
I am not referring to the common optimizations applied to these
algorithms. For example, the controlling of loop iterations to
avoid sum overflows then truncating outside of the main loop.
I am referring to the design itself. I understand the second sum
(sum2) was introduced to make the algorithm position-dependent but
it is truly sub-optimal? Sum2 is just a modification of sum1 (the
sum of the previous sum1 value added to the current sum1 value).
If we take the 16-bit version as our example, sum1 is a 8-bit
product of the input data, while sum2 is a product of sum1, so
therefore the final 16-bit checksum is in fact an 8-bit product
of the data appended to 16-bits to catch out-of-sequence input.
This means our final checksum, an 8-bit sum of our input data,
is a value of only 256 possible values. As we are passing on
a 16-bit value with our data we could have a checksum value that
is one of 65536 possible values.
It occurred to me that if we had a means of ensuring a position-
dependent check without sacrificing any bits of the checksum we
would have an exponentially better validation.
As I understand it, sum2 was introduced solely to identify out-
of-sequence transmission, and so can be discarded if we find an
alternative to producing a position-dependent checksum. And as
it turns out, we do have an alternative and it comes cheap.
It is cheap because it does not add extra coding to the process
compared to current 'sum2' designs - it is the index position
in the sequence that when hashed with each corresponding byte
ensures a position-dependent check.
One final note - the design below is free of overflow checks,
lossless reduction, and possible loop optimizations, just for
clarity, as this is
about a new out-of-sequence error check technique, not about
implementation details. Fletch64 is not demonstrated below as
it may require a more complicated implementation but the
byte/index hash applies the same.
Revision - because a checksum algorithm can process a large data
count the index position check value could itself cause premature
overflow and require a higher number of reduction operations with
lower inner loop count. The fix was to truncate the index position
check to 8 bits. Now the checksum can process a much greater data
count in the inner loop before overflow.
The only down-side to this change is if a contiguous string of the
data of exactly 256 byte is displaced any multiple of 256 positions
from its original position the error would go undetected.
uint8_t Fletch8( uint8_t *data, int count )
{
uint32_t sum = 0;
int index;
for ( index = 0; index < count; ++index )
sum = sum + ( data[index] xor index & ffh );
return sum & ffh;
}
uint16_t Fletch16( uint8_t *data, int count )
{
uint32_t sum = 0;
int index;
for ( index = 0; index < count; ++index )
sum = sum + ( data[index] xor index & ffh );
return sum & ffffh;
}
uint32_t Fletch32( uint8_t *data, int count )
{
uint64_t sum = 0;
int index;
for ( index = 0; index < count; ++index )
sum = sum + ( data[index] xor index & ffh );
return sum & ffffffffh;
}
I just go through the code of Zlib CRC32 combine function, but I am confused about the endian of the CRC32 input. Does it only work for big endian ? If I have small endian format, should I do a byte swap first before I use the function ? Thanks in advance.
/* ========================================================================= */
local uLong crc32_combine_(crc1, crc2, len2)
uLong crc1;
uLong crc2;
z_off64_t len2;
{
int n;
unsigned long row;
unsigned long even[GF2_DIM]; /* even-power-of-two zeros operator */
unsigned long odd[GF2_DIM]; /* odd-power-of-two zeros operator */
/* degenerate case (also disallow negative lengths) */
if (len2 <= 0)
return crc1;
/* put operator for one zero bit in odd */
odd[0] = 0xedb88320UL; /* CRC-32 polynomial */
row = 1;
for (n = 1; n < GF2_DIM; n++) {
odd[n] = row;
row <<= 1;
}
/* put operator for two zero bits in even */
gf2_matrix_square(even, odd);
/* put operator for four zero bits in odd */
gf2_matrix_square(odd, even);
/* apply len2 zeros to crc1 (first square will put the operator for one
zero byte, eight zero bits, in even) */
do {
/* apply zeros operator for this bit of len2 */
gf2_matrix_square(even, odd);
if (len2 & 1)
crc1 = gf2_matrix_times(even, crc1);
len2 >>= 1;
/* if no more bits set, then done */
if (len2 == 0)
break;
/* another iteration of the loop with odd and even swapped */
gf2_matrix_square(odd, even);
if (len2 & 1)
crc1 = gf2_matrix_times(odd, crc1);
len2 >>= 1;
/* if no more bits set, then done */
} while (len2 != 0);
/* return combined crc */
crc1 ^= crc2;
return crc1;
}
All of zlib works in little or big endian architectures.
There is no "endianess" of the arguments of crc32_combine(). The crc1 and crc2 arguments are passed as 32-bit integers, not sequences of bytes, and so have no endianess.
By the way, there is more recent code for crc32_combine() that is little bit more efficient.
I am building a C library on big integer number. Basically, I'm seeking a fast algorythm to convert any integer in it binary representation to a decimal one
I saw JDK's Biginteger.toString() implementation, but it looks quite heavy to me, as it was made to convert the number to any radix (it uses a division for each digits, which should be pretty slow while dealing with thousands of digits).
So if you have any documentations / knowledge to share about it, I would be glad to read it.
EDIT: more precisions about my question:
Let P a memory address
Let N be the number of bytes allocated (and set) at P
How to convert the integer represented by the N bytes at address P (let's say in little endian to make things simpler), to a C string
Example:
N = 1
P = some random memory address storing '00101010'
out string = "42"
Thank for your answer still
The reason for the BigInteger.toString method looking heavy is doing the conversion in chunks.
A trivial algorithm would take the last digits and then divide the whole big integer by the radix until there is nothing left.
One problem with this is that a big integer division is quite expensive, so the number is subdivided into chunks that can be processed with regular integer division (opposed to BigInt division):
static String toDecimal(BigInteger bigInt) {
BigInteger chunker = new BigInteger(1000000000);
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
do {
int current = bigInt.mod(chunker).getInt(0);
bigInt = bigInt.div(chunker);
for (int i = 0; i < 9; i ++) {
sb.append((char) ('0' + remainder % 10));
current /= 10;
if (currnet == 0 && bigInt.signum() == 0) {
break;
}
}
} while (bigInt.signum() != 0);
return sb.reverse().toString();
}
That said, for a fixed radix, you are probably even better off with porting the "double dabble" algorithm to your needs, as suggested in the comments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dabble
I recently got the challenge to print a big mersenne prime: 2**82589933-1. On my CPU that takes ~40 minutes with apcalc and ~120 minutes with python 2.7. It's a number with 24 million digits and a bit.
Here is my own little C code for the conversion:
// print 2**82589933-1
#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <inttypes.h>
#include <string.h>
const uint32_t exponent = 82589933;
//const uint32_t exponent = 100;
//outputs 1267650600228229401496703205375
const uint32_t blocks = (exponent + 31) / 32;
const uint32_t digits = (int)(exponent * log(2.0) / log(10.0)) + 10;
uint32_t num[2][blocks];
char out[digits + 1];
// blocks : number of uint32_t in num1 and num2
// num1 : number to convert
// num2 : free space
// out : end of output buffer
void conv(uint32_t blocks, uint32_t *num1, uint32_t *num2, char *out) {
if (blocks == 0) return;
const uint32_t div = 1000000000;
uint64_t t = 0;
for (uint32_t i = 0; i < blocks; ++i) {
t = (t << 32) + num1[i];
num2[i] = t / div;
t = t % div;
}
for (int i = 0; i < 9; ++i) {
*out-- = '0' + (t % 10);
t /= 10;
}
if (num2[0] == 0) {
--blocks;
num2++;
}
conv(blocks, num2, num1, out);
}
int main() {
// prepare number
uint32_t t = exponent % 32;
num[0][0] = (1LLU << t) - 1;
memset(&num[0][1], 0xFF, (blocks - 1) * 4);
// prepare output
memset(out, '0', digits);
out[digits] = 0;
// convert to decimal
conv(blocks, num[0], num[1], &out[digits - 1]);
// output number
char *res = out;
while(*res == '0') ++res;
printf("%s\n", res);
return 0;
}
The conversion is destructive and tail recursive. In each step it divides num1 by 1_000_000_000 and stores the result in num2. The remainder is added to out. Then it calls itself with num1 and num2 switched and often shortened by one (blocks is decremented). out is filled from back to front. You have to allocate it large enough and then strip leading zeroes.
Python seems to be using a similar mechanism for converting big integers to decimal.
Want to do better?
For large number like in my case each division by 1_000_000_000 takes rather long. At a certain size a divide&conquer algorithm does better. In my case the first division would be by dividing by 10 ^ 16777216 to split the number into divident and remainder. Then convert each part separately. Now each part is still big so split again at 10 ^ 8388608. Recursively keep splitting till the numbers are small enough. Say maybe 1024 digits each. Those convert with the simple algorithm above. The right definition of "small enough" would have to be tested, 1024 is just a guess.
While the long division of two big integer numbers is expensive, much more so than a division by 1_000_000_000, the time spend there is then saved because each separate chunk requires far fewer divisions by 1_000_000_000 to convert to decimal.
And if you have split the problem into separate and independent chunks it's only a tiny step away from spreading the chunks out among multiple cores. That would really speed up the conversion another step. It looks like apcalc uses divide&conquer but not multi-threading.
It might help to start out with a real world example. Say I'm writing a web app that's backed by MongoDB, so my records have a long hex primary key, making my url to view a record look like /widget/55c460d8e2d6e59da89d08d0. That seems excessively long. Urls can use many more characters than that. While there are just under 8 x 10^28 (16^24) possible values in a 24 digit hex number, just limiting yourself to the characters matched by a [a-zA-Z0-9] regex class (a YouTube video id uses more), 62 characters, you can get past 8 x 10^28 in only 17 characters.
I want an algorithm that will convert any string that is limited to a specific alphabet of characters to any other string with another alphabet of characters, where the value of each character c could be thought of as alphabet.indexOf(c).
Something of the form:
convert(value, sourceAlphabet, destinationAlphabet)
Assumptions
all parameters are strings
every character in value exists in sourceAlphabet
every character in sourceAlphabet and destinationAlphabet is unique
Simplest example
var hex = "0123456789abcdef";
var base10 = "0123456789";
var result = convert("12245589", base10, hex); // result is "bada55";
But I also want it to work to convert War & Peace from the Russian alphabet plus some punctuation to the entire unicode charset and back again losslessly.
Is this possible?
The only way I was ever taught to do base conversions in Comp Sci 101 was to first convert to a base ten integer by summing digit * base^position and then doing the reverse to convert to the target base. Such a method is insufficient for the conversion of very long strings, because the integers get too big.
It certainly feels intuitively that a base conversion could be done in place, as you step through the string (probably backwards to maintain standard significant digit order), keeping track of a remainder somehow, but I'm not smart enough to work out how.
That's where you come in, StackOverflow. Are you smart enough?
Perhaps this is a solved problem, done on paper by some 18th century mathematician, implemented in LISP on punch cards in 1970 and the first homework assignment in Cryptography 101, but my searches have borne no fruit.
I'd prefer a solution in javascript with a functional style, but any language or style will do, as long as you're not cheating with some big integer library. Bonus points for efficiency, of course.
Please refrain from criticizing the original example. The general nerd cred of solving the problem is more important than any application of the solution.
Here is a solution in C that is very fast, using bit shift operations. It assumes that you know what the length of the decoded string should be. The strings are vectors of integers in the range 0..maximum for each alphabet. It is up to the user to convert to and from strings with restricted ranges of characters. As for the "in-place" in the question title, the source and destination vectors can overlap, but only if the source alphabet is not larger than the destination alphabet.
/*
recode version 1.0, 22 August 2015
Copyright (C) 2015 Mark Adler
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
arising from the use of this software.
Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
freely, subject to the following restrictions:
1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
Mark Adler
madler#alumni.caltech.edu
*/
/* Recode a vector from one alphabet to another using intermediate
variable-length bit codes. */
/* The approach is to use a Huffman code over equiprobable alphabets in two
directions. First to encode the source alphabet to a string of bits, and
second to encode the string of bits to the destination alphabet. This will
be reasonably close to the efficiency of base-encoding with arbitrary
precision arithmetic. */
#include <stddef.h> // size_t
#include <limits.h> // UINT_MAX, ULLONG_MAX
#if UINT_MAX == ULLONG_MAX
# error recode() assumes that long long has more bits than int
#endif
/* Take a list of integers source[0..slen-1], all in the range 0..smax, and
code them into dest[0..*dlen-1], where each value is in the range 0..dmax.
*dlen returns the length of the result, which will not exceed the value of
*dlen when called. If the original *dlen is not large enough to hold the
full result, then recode() will return non-zero to indicate failure.
Otherwise recode() will return 0. recode() will also return non-zero if
either of the smax or dmax parameters are less than one. The non-zero
return codes are 1 if *dlen is not long enough, 2 for invalid parameters,
and 3 if any of the elements of source are greater than smax.
Using this same operation on the result with smax and dmax reversed reverses
the operation, restoring the original vector. However there may be more
symbols returned than the original, so the number of symbols expected needs
to be known for decoding. (An end symbol could be appended to the source
alphabet to include the length in the coding, but then encoding and decoding
would no longer be symmetric, and the coding efficiency would be reduced.
This is left as an exercise for the reader if that is desired.) */
int recode(unsigned *dest, size_t *dlen, unsigned dmax,
const unsigned *source, size_t slen, unsigned smax)
{
// compute sbits and scut, with which we will recode the source with
// sbits-1 bits for symbols < scut, otherwise with sbits bits (adding scut)
if (smax < 1)
return 2;
unsigned sbits = 0;
unsigned scut = 1; // 2**sbits
while (scut && scut <= smax) {
scut <<= 1;
sbits++;
}
scut -= smax + 1;
// same thing for dbits and dcut
if (dmax < 1)
return 2;
unsigned dbits = 0;
unsigned dcut = 1; // 2**dbits
while (dcut && dcut <= dmax) {
dcut <<= 1;
dbits++;
}
dcut -= dmax + 1;
// recode a base smax+1 vector to a base dmax+1 vector using an
// intermediate bit vector (a sliding window of that bit vector is kept in
// a bit buffer)
unsigned long long buf = 0; // bit buffer
unsigned have = 0; // number of bits in bit buffer
size_t i = 0, n = 0; // source and dest indices
unsigned sym; // symbol being encoded
for (;;) {
// encode enough of source into bits to encode that to dest
while (have < dbits && i < slen) {
sym = source[i++];
if (sym > smax) {
*dlen = n;
return 3;
}
if (sym < scut) {
buf = (buf << (sbits - 1)) + sym;
have += sbits - 1;
}
else {
buf = (buf << sbits) + sym + scut;
have += sbits;
}
}
// if not enough bits to assure one symbol, then break out to a special
// case for coding the final symbol
if (have < dbits)
break;
// encode one symbol to dest
if (n == *dlen)
return 1;
sym = buf >> (have - dbits + 1);
if (sym < dcut) {
dest[n++] = sym;
have -= dbits - 1;
}
else {
sym = buf >> (have - dbits);
dest[n++] = sym - dcut;
have -= dbits;
}
buf &= ((unsigned long long)1 << have) - 1;
}
// if any bits are left in the bit buffer, encode one last symbol to dest
if (have) {
if (n == *dlen)
return 1;
sym = buf;
sym <<= dbits - 1 - have;
if (sym >= dcut)
sym = (sym << 1) - dcut;
dest[n++] = sym;
}
// return recoded vector
*dlen = n;
return 0;
}
/* Test recode(). */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <assert.h>
// Return a random vector of len unsigned values in the range 0..max.
static void ranvec(unsigned *vec, size_t len, unsigned max) {
unsigned bits = 0;
unsigned long long mask = 1;
while (mask <= max) {
mask <<= 1;
bits++;
}
mask--;
unsigned long long ran = 0;
unsigned have = 0;
size_t n = 0;
while (n < len) {
while (have < bits) {
ran = (ran << 31) + random();
have += 31;
}
if ((ran & mask) <= max)
vec[n++] = ran & mask;
ran >>= bits;
have -= bits;
}
}
// Get a valid number from str and assign it to var
#define NUM(var, str) \
do { \
char *end; \
unsigned long val = strtoul(str, &end, 0); \
var = val; \
if (*end || var != val) { \
fprintf(stderr, \
"invalid or out of range numeric argument: %s\n", str); \
return 1; \
} \
} while (0)
/* "bet n m len count" generates count test vectors of length len, where each
entry is in the range 0..n. Each vector is recoded to another vector using
only symbols in the range 0..m. That vector is recoded back to a vector
using only symbols in 0..n, and that result is compared with the original
random vector. Report on the average ratio of input and output symbols, as
compared to the optimal ratio for arbitrary precision base encoding. */
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
// get sizes of alphabets and length of test vector, compute maximum sizes
// of recoded vectors
unsigned smax, dmax, runs;
size_t slen, dsize, bsize;
if (argc != 5) { fputs("need four arguments\n", stderr); return 1; }
NUM(smax, argv[1]);
NUM(dmax, argv[2]);
NUM(slen, argv[3]);
NUM(runs, argv[4]);
dsize = ceil(slen * ceil(log2(smax + 1.)) / floor(log2(dmax + 1.)));
bsize = ceil(dsize * ceil(log2(dmax + 1.)) / floor(log2(smax + 1.)));
// generate random test vectors, encode, decode, and compare
srandomdev();
unsigned source[slen], dest[dsize], back[bsize];
unsigned mis = 0, i;
unsigned long long dtot = 0;
int ret;
for (i = 0; i < runs; i++) {
ranvec(source, slen, smax);
size_t dlen = dsize;
ret = recode(dest, &dlen, dmax, source, slen, smax);
if (ret) {
fprintf(stderr, "encode error %d\n", ret);
break;
}
dtot += dlen;
size_t blen = bsize;
ret = recode(back, &blen, smax, dest, dlen, dmax);
if (ret) {
fprintf(stderr, "decode error %d\n", ret);
break;
}
if (blen < slen || memcmp(source, back, slen)) // blen > slen is ok
mis++;
}
if (mis)
fprintf(stderr, "%u/%u mismatches!\n", mis, i);
if (ret == 0)
printf("mean dest/source symbols = %.4f (optimal = %.4f)\n",
dtot / (i * (double)slen), log(smax + 1.) / log(dmax + 1.));
return 0;
}
As has been pointed out in other StackOverflow answers, try not to think of summing digit * base^position as converting it to base ten; rather, think of it as directing the computer to generate a representation of the quantity represented by the number in its own terms (for most computers probably closer to our concept of base 2). Once the computer has its own representation of the quantity, we can direct it to output the number in any way we like.
By rejecting "big integer" implementations and asking for letter-by-letter conversion you are at the same time arguing that the numerical/alphabetical representation of quantity is not actually what it is, namely that each position represents a quantity of digit * base^position. If the nine-millionth character of War and Peace does represent what you are asking to convert it from, then the computer at some point will need to generate a representation for Д * 33^9000000.
I don't think any solution can work generally because if ne != m for some integer e and some MAX_INT because there's no way to calculate the value of the target base in a certain place p if np > MAX_INT.
You can get away with this for the case where ne == m for some e because the problem is recursively doable (the first e digits of n can be summed and converted into the first digit of M, and then chopped off and repeated.
If you don't have this useful property, then eventually you're going to have to try to take some part of the original base and try to perform modulus in np and np is going to be greater than MAX_INT, which means it's impossible.
I do not intend to use this for security purposes or statistical analysis. I need to create a simple random number generator for use in my computer graphics application. I don't want to use the term "random number generator", since people think in very strict terms about it, but I can't think of any other word to describe it.
it has to be fast.
it must be repeatable, given a particular seed.
Eg: If seed = x, then the series a,b,c,d,e,f..... should happen every time I use the seed x.
Most importantly, I need to be able to compute the nth term in the series in constant time.
It seems, that I cannot achieve this with rand_r or srand(), since these need are state dependent, and I may need to compute the nth in some unknown order.
I've looked at Linear Feedback Shift registers, but these are state dependent too.
So far I have this:
int rand = (n * prime1 + seed) % prime2
n = used to indicate the index of the term in the sequence. Eg: For
first term, n ==1
prime1 and prime2 are prime numbers where
prime1 > prime2
seed = some number which allows one to use the same function to
produce a different series depending on the seed, but the same series
for a given seed.
I can't tell how good or bad this is, since I haven't used it enough, but it would be great if people with more experience in this can point out the problems with this, or help me improve it..
EDIT - I don't care if it is predictable. I'm just trying to creating some randomness in my computer graphics.
Use a cryptographic block cipher in CTR mode. The Nth output is just encrypt(N). Not only does this give you the desired properties (O(1) computation of the Nth output); it also has strong non-predictability properties.
I stumbled on this a while back, looking for a solution for the same problem. Recently, I figured out how to do it in low-constant O(log(n)) time. While this doesn't quite match the O(1) requested by the author, It may be fast enough (a sample run, compiled with -O3, achieved performance of 1 billion arbitrary index random numbers, with n varying between 1 and 2^48, in 55.7s -- just shy of 18M numbers/s).
First, the theory behind the solution:
A common type of RNGs are Linear Congruential Generators, basically, they work as follows:
random(n) = (m*random(n-1) + b) mod p
Where m and b, and p are constants (see a reference on LCGs for how they are chosen). From this, we can devise the following using a bit of modular arithmetic:
random(0) = seed mod p
random(1) = m*seed + b mod p
random(2) = m^2*seed + m*b + b mod p
...
random(n) = m^n*seed + b*Sum_{i = 0 to n - 1} m^i mod p
= m^n*seed + b*(m^n - 1)/(m - 1) mod p
Computing the above can be a problem, since the numbers will quickly exceed numeric limits. The solution for the generic case is to compute m^n in modulo with p*(m - 1), however, if we take b = 0 (a sub-case of LCGs sometimes called Multiplicative congruential Generators), we have a much simpler solution, and can do our computations in modulo p only.
In the following, I use the constant parameters used by RANF (developed by CRAY), where p = 2^48 and g = 44485709377909. The fact that p is a power of 2 reduces the number of operations required (as expected):
#include <cassert>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <cstdlib>
class RANF{
// MCG constants and state data
static const uint64_t m = 44485709377909ULL;
static const uint64_t n = 0x0000010000000000ULL; // 2^48
static const uint64_t randMax = n - 1;
const uint64_t seed;
uint64_t state;
public:
// Constructors, which define the seed
RANF(uint64_t seed) : seed(seed), state(seed) {
assert(seed > 0 && "A seed of 0 breaks the LCG!");
}
// Gets the next random number in the sequence
inline uint64_t getNext(){
state *= m;
return state & randMax;
}
// Sets the MCG to a specific index
inline void setPosition(size_t index){
state = seed;
uint64_t mPower = m;
for (uint64_t b = 1; index; b <<= 1){
if (index & b){
state *= mPower;
index ^= b;
}
mPower *= mPower;
}
}
};
#include <cstdio>
void example(){
RANF R(1);
// Gets the number through random-access -- O(log(n))
R.setPosition(12345); // Goes to the nth random number
printf("fast nth number = %lu\n", R.getNext());
// Gets the number through standard, sequential access -- O(n)
R.setPosition(0);
for(size_t i = 0; i < 12345; i++) R.getNext();
printf("slow nth number = %lu\n", R.getNext());
}
While I presume the author has moved on by now, hopefully this will be of use to someone else.
If you're really concerned about runtime performance, the above can be made about 10x faster with lookup tables, at the cost of compilation time and binary size (it also is O(1) w.r.t the desired random index, as requested by OP)
In the version below, I used c++14 constexpr to generate the lookup tables at compile time, and got to 176M arbitrary index random numbers per second (doing this did however add about 12s of extra compilation time, and a 1.5MB increase in binary size -- the added time may be mitigated if partial recompilation is used).
class RANF{
// MCG constants and state data
static const uint64_t m = 44485709377909ULL;
static const uint64_t n = 0x0000010000000000ULL; // 2^48
static const uint64_t randMax = n - 1;
const uint64_t seed;
uint64_t state;
// Lookup table
struct lookup_t{
uint64_t v[3][65536];
constexpr lookup_t() : v() {
uint64_t mi = RANF::m;
for (size_t i = 0; i < 3; i++){
v[i][0] = 1;
uint64_t val = mi;
for (uint16_t j = 0x0001; j; j++){
v[i][j] = val;
val *= mi;
}
mi = val;
}
}
};
friend struct lookup_t;
public:
// Constructors, which define the seed
RANF(uint64_t seed) : seed(seed), state(seed) {
assert(seed > 0 && "A seed of 0 breaks the LCG!");
}
// Gets the next random number in the sequence
inline uint64_t getNext(){
state *= m;
return state & randMax;
}
// Sets the MCG to a specific index
// Note: idx.u16 indices need to be adapted for big-endian machines!
inline void setPosition(size_t index){
static constexpr auto lookup = lookup_t();
union { uint16_t u16[4]; uint64_t u64; } idx;
idx.u64 = index;
state = seed * lookup.v[0][idx.u16[0]] * lookup.v[1][idx.u16[1]] * lookup.v[2][idx.u16[2]];
}
};
Basically, what this does is splits the computation of, for example, m^0xAAAABBBBCCCC mod p, into (m^0xAAAA00000000 mod p)*(m^0xBBBB0000 mod p)*(m^CCCC mod p) mod p, and then precomputes tables for each of the values in the 0x0000 - 0xFFFF range that could fill AAAA, BBBB or CCCC.
RNG in a normal sense, have the sequence pattern like f(n) = S(f(n-1))
They also lost precision at some point (like % mod), due to computing convenience, therefore it is not possible to expand the sequence to a function like X(n) = f(n) = trivial function with n only.
This mean at best you have O(n) with that.
To target for O(1) you therefore need to abandon the idea of f(n) = S(f(n-1)), and designate a trivial formula directly so that the N'th number can be calculated directly without knowing (N-1)'th; this also render the seed meaningless.
So, you end up have a simple algebra function and not a sequence. For example:
int my_rand(int n) { return 42; } // Don't laugh!
int my_rand(int n) { 3*n*n + 2*n + 7; }
If you want to put more constraint to the generated pattern (like distribution), it become a complex maths problem.
However, for your original goal, if what you want is constant speed to get pseudo-random numbers, I suggest to pre-generate it with traditional RNG and access with lookup table.
EDIT: I noticed you have concern with a table size for a lot of numbers, however you may introduce some hybrid model, like a table of N entries, and do f(k) = g( tbl[k%n], k), which at least provide good distribution across N continue sequence.
This demonstrates an PRNG implemented as a hashed counter. This might appear to duplicate R.'s suggestion (using a block cipher in CTR mode as a stream cipher), but for this, I avoided using cryptographically secure primitives: for speed of execution and because security wasn't a desired feature.
If we were trying to create a secure stream cipher with your requirement that any emitted sequence be trivially repeatable, given knowledge of its index...
...then we could choose a secure hash algorithm (like SHA256) and a counter with a lot of bits (maybe 2048 -> sequence repeats every 2^2048 generated numbers without reseeding).
HOWEVER, the version I present here uses Bob Jenkins' famous hash function (simple and fast, but not secure) along with a 64-bit counter (which is as big as integers can get on my system, without needing custom incrementing code).
Code in main demonstrates that knowledge of the RNG's counter (seed) after initialization allows a PRNG sequence to be repeated, as long as we know how many values were generated leading up to the repetition point.
Actually, if you know the counter's value at any point in the output sequence, you will be able to retrieve all values generated previous to that point, AND all values which will be generated afterward. This only involves adding or subtracting ordinal differences to/from a reference counter value associated with a known point in the output sequence.
It should be pretty easy to adapt this class for use as a testing framework -- you could plug in other hash functions and change the counter's size to see what kind of impact there is on speed as well as the distribution of generated values (the only uniformity analysis I did was to look for patterns in the screenfuls of hexadecimal numbers printed by main()).
#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <ctime>
using namespace std;
class CHashedCounterRng {
static unsigned JenkinsHash(const void *input, unsigned len) {
unsigned hash = 0;
for(unsigned i=0; i<len; ++i) {
hash += static_cast<const unsigned char*>(input)[i];
hash += hash << 10;
hash ^= hash >> 6;
}
hash += hash << 3;
hash ^= hash >> 11;
hash += hash << 15;
return hash;
}
unsigned long long m_counter;
void IncrementCounter() { ++m_counter; }
public:
unsigned long long GetSeed() const {
return m_counter;
}
void SetSeed(unsigned long long new_seed) {
m_counter = new_seed;
}
unsigned int operator ()() {
// the next random number is generated here
const auto r = JenkinsHash(&m_counter, sizeof(m_counter));
IncrementCounter();
return r;
}
// the default coontructor uses time()
// to seed the counter
CHashedCounterRng() : m_counter(time(0)) {}
// you can supply a predetermined seed here,
// or after construction with SetSeed(seed)
CHashedCounterRng(unsigned long long seed) : m_counter(seed) {}
};
int main() {
CHashedCounterRng rng;
// time()'s high bits change very slowly, so look at low digits
// if you want to verify that the seed is different between runs
const auto stored_counter = rng.GetSeed();
cout << "initial seed: " << stored_counter << endl;
for(int i=0; i<20; ++i) {
for(int j=0; j<8; ++j) {
const unsigned x = rng();
cout << setfill('0') << setw(8) << hex << x << ' ';
}
cout << endl;
}
cout << endl;
cout << "The last line again:" << endl;
rng.SetSeed(stored_counter + 19 * 8);
for(int j=0; j<8; ++j) {
const unsigned x = rng();
cout << setfill('0') << setw(8) << hex << x << ' ';
}
cout << endl << endl;
return 0;
}