Fast Float Random Numbers¶
- Author or source: moc.liamg@seir.kinimod
- Created: 2009-10-29 13:39:29
a small and fast implementation for random float numbers in the range [-1,1], usable as
white noise oscillator.
compared to the naive usage of the rand() function it gives a speedup factor of 9-10.
compared to a direct implementation of the rand() function (visual studio implementation)
it still gives a speedup by a factor of 2-3.
apart from beeing faster it also provides more precision for the resulting floats since
its base values use full 32bit precision.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 | // set the initial seed to whatever you like
static int RandSeed = 1;
// using rand() (16bit precision)
// takes about 110 seconds for 2 billion calls
float RandFloat1()
{
return ((float)rand()/RAND_MAX) * 2.0f - 1.0f;
}
// direct implementation of rand() (16 bit precision)
// takes about 32 seconds for 2 billion calls
float RandFloat2()
{
return ((float)(((RandSeed = RandSeed * 214013L + 2531011L) >> 16) & 0x7fff)/RAND_MAX) * 2.0f - 1.0f;
}
// fast rand float, using full 32bit precision
// takes about 12 seconds for 2 billion calls
float Fast_RandFloat()
{
RandSeed *= 16807;
return (float)RandSeed * 4.6566129e-010f;
}
|
Comments¶
- Date: 2009-11-20 23:40:37
- By: judahmenter@gee mail.com
There is no doubt that implementation 3 is fast, but the problem I had with it is that there's no obvious way to limit the amplitude of the generated signal.
So instead I tried implementation 2 and ran into a different problem. The code is written such that it assumes that RAND_MAX is equal to 0x7FFF, which was not true on my system (it was 0x7FFFFFFF). Fortunately, this was easy to fix. I simply removed the >> 16 and worked fine for me. My final implementation was:
return (float)(RandSeed = RandSeed * 214013L + 2531011L) / 0x7FFFFFFF * 2.0f * amp - amp;
where "amp" is the desired amplitude.
- Date: 2009-12-29 22:53:23
- By: earlevel [] earlevel [] com
It should be noted in the code that for method #3, you must initialize the seed to non-zero before using it.
- Date: 2010-01-24 16:36:03
- By: moc.boohay@bob
I don't understand Judahmenter's comment about 3 not limiting the amplitude. As it stands it returns a value -1 to 1, so just multiply by your 'amp' value.
This turns into a handy 0-1 random number if you take off the sign bit:
(float)(RandSeed & 0x7FFFFFFF) * 4.6566129e-010f;