Testu01

Utilities for statistical testing of uniform random number generators

TestU01 is a software library, implemented in the ANSI C language, and offering a collection of utilities for the empirical statistical testing of uniform random number generators.

The library implements several types of random number generators in generic form, as well as many specific generators proposed in the literature or found in widely-used software. It provides general implementations of the classical statistical tests for random number generators, as well as several others proposed in the literature, and some original ones. These tests can be applied to the generators predefined in the library and to user-defined generators. Specific tests suites for either sequences of uniform random numbers in [0,1] or bit sequences are also available. Basic tools for plotting vectors of points produced by generators are provided as well.

Additional software permits one to perform systematic studies of the interaction between a specific test and the structure of the point sets produced by a given family of random number generators. That is, for a given kind of test and a given class of random number generators, to determine how large should be the sample size of the test, as a function of the generator’s period length, before the generator starts to fail the test systematically.