Xorshift

Marsaglia suggested scrambling the output by combining it with a simple additive counter modulo 2³² (which he calls a "Weyl sequence" after Weyl's equidistribution theorem). This also increases the period by a factor of 2³², to 2¹⁹²−2³²:

#include <stdint.h>

struct xorwow_state {
    uint32_t a, b, c, d, e;
    uint32_t counter;
};

/* The state array must be initialized to not be all zero in the first four words */
uint32_t xorwow(struct xorwow_state *state)
{
    /* Algorithm "xorwow" from p. 5 of Marsaglia, "Xorshift RNGs" */
    uint32_t t = state->e;
    uint32_t s = state->a;
    state->e = state->d;
    state->d = state->c;
    state->c = state->b;
    state->b = s;
    t ^= t >> 2;
    t ^= t << 1;
    t ^= s ^ (s << 4);
    state->a = t;
    state->counter += 362437;
    return t + state->counter;
}

This performs well, but fails a few tests in BigCrush.[6] This generator is the default in Nvidia's CUDA toolkit.[7]

A xorshift* generator takes a xorshift generator and applies an invertible multiplication (modulo the word size) to its output as a non-linear transformation, as suggested by Marsaglia.[1] The following 64-bit generator with 64 bits of state has a maximal period of 2⁶⁴−1[8] and fails only the MatrixRank test of BigCrush:

#include <stdint.h>

struct xorshift64s_state {
  uint64_t a;
};

uint64_t xorshift64s(struct xorshift64s_state *state)
{
	uint64_t x = state->a;	/* The state must be seeded with a nonzero value. */
	x ^= x >> 12; // a
	x ^= x << 25; // b
	x ^= x >> 27; // c
	state->a = x;
	return x * UINT64_C(0x2545F4914F6CDD1D);
}

A similar generator is suggested in Numerical Recipes[9] as RanQ1, but it also fails the BirthdaySpacings test.

If the generator is modified to return only the high 32 bits, then it passes BigCrush with zero failures.[10]^:7 In fact, a reduced version with only 40 bits of internal state passes the suite, suggesting a large safety margin.[10]^:19

Vigna[8] suggests the following xorshift1024* generator with 1024 bits of state and a maximal period of 2¹⁰²⁴−1; it however does not always pass BigCrush.[5] xoshiro256** is therefore a much better option.

#include <stdint.h>

/* The state must be seeded so that there is at least one non-zero element in array */
struct xorshift1024s_state {
	uint64_t array[16];
	int index;
};

uint64_t xorshift1024s(struct xorshift1024s_state *state)
{
	int index = state->index;
	uint64_t const s = state->array[index++];
	uint64_t t = state->array[index &= 15];
	t ^= t << 31;		// a
	t ^= t >> 11;		// b
	t ^= s ^ (s >> 30);	// c
	state->array[index] = t;
	state->index = index;
	return t * (uint64_t)1181783497276652981;
}

Both generators, as it happens with all xorshift* generators, emit a sequence of 64-bit values that is equidistributed in the maximum possible dimension (except that they will never output zero for 16 calls, i.e. 128 bytes, in a row).[8]

Rather than using multiplication, it is possible to use addition as a faster non-linear transformation. The idea was first proposed by Saito and Matsumoto (also responsible for the Mersenne Twister) in the XSadd generator, which adds two consecutive outputs of an underlying xorshift generator based on 32-bit shifts.[11]

XSadd, however, has some weakness in the low-order bits of its output; it fails several BigCrush tests when the output words are bit-reversed. To correct this problem, Vigna[12] introduced the xorshift+ family, based on 64-bit shifts: the following xorshift128+ generator uses 128 bits of state and has a maximal period of 2¹²⁸−1. It passes BigCrush, but not when reversed.[5]

#include <stdint.h>

struct xorshift128p_state {
  uint64_t a, b;
};

/* The state must be seeded so that it is not all zero */
uint64_t xorshift128p(struct xorshift128p_state *state)
{
	uint64_t t = state->a;
	uint64_t const s = state->b;
	state->a = s;
	t ^= t << 23;		// a
	t ^= t >> 17;		// b
	t ^= s ^ (s >> 26);	// c
	state->b = t;
	return t + s;
}

This generator is one of the fastest generators passing BigCrush.[4] One disadvantage of adding consecutive outputs is while the underlying xorshift128 generator is 2-dimensionally equidistributed, the associated xorshift128+ generator is only 1-dimensionally equidistributed.[12]

Xorshift+ generators, even as large as xorshift1024+, exhibit some detectable linearity in the low-order bits of their output.[5]

xoshiro256** is the family's general-purpose random 64-bit number generator.

/*  Adapted from the code included on Sebastian Vigna's website */

#include <stdint.h>

uint64_t rol64(uint64_t x, int k)
{
	return (x << k) | (x >> (64 - k));
}

struct xoshiro256ss_state {
	uint64_t s[4];
};

uint64_t xoshiro256ss(struct xoshiro256ss_state *state)
{
	uint64_t *s = state->s;
	uint64_t const result = rol64(s[1] * 5, 7) * 9;
	uint64_t const t = s[1] << 17;

	s[2] ^= s[0];
	s[3] ^= s[1];
	s[1] ^= s[2];
	s[0] ^= s[3];

	s[2] ^= t;
	s[3] = rol64(s[3], 45);

	return result;
}

xoshiro256+ is approximately 15% faster than xoshiro256**, but the lowest three bits have low linear complexity; therefore, it should be used only for floating point results by extracting the upper 53 bits.

#include <stdint.h>

uint64_t rol64(uint64_t x, int k)
{
	return (x << k) | (x >> (64 - k));
}

struct xoshiro256p_state {
	uint64_t s[4];
};

uint64_t xoshiro256p(struct xoshiro256p_state *state)
{
	uint64_t (*s)[4] = &state->s;
	uint64_t const result = s[0] + s[3];
	uint64_t const t = s[1] << 17;

	s[2] ^= s[0];
	s[3] ^= s[1];
	s[1] ^= s[2];
	s[0] ^= s[3];

	s[2] ^= t;
	s[3] = rol64(s[3], 45);

	return result;
}

If space is at a premium, xoroshiro128** is the equivalent of xoshiro256**, and xoroshiro128+ is the equivalent of xoshiro256+. These have smaller state spaces, and thus are less useful for massively parallel programs. xoroshiro128+ also exhibits a mild dependency in Hamming weights, generating a failure after 5TB of output. The authors do not believe that this can be detected in real world programs.

For 32-bit output, xoshiro128** and xoshiro128+ are exactly equivalent to xoshiro256** and xoshiro256+, with uint32_t in place of uint64_t, and with different shift/rotate constants; similarly, xoroshiro64** and xoroshiro64* are the equivalent of xoroshiro128** and xoroshiro128+ respectively. Unlike the functions with larger state, xoroshiro64** and xoroshiro64* are not straightforward ports of their higher-precision counterparts.

More recently, the ++ generators have been made as an alternative to the ** generators.