The Well Equidistributed Long-period Linear (WELL) is a family of pseudorandom number generators developed in 2006 by François Panneton, Pierre L'Ecuyer, and Makoto Matsumoto (松本 眞). It is a form of linear-feedback shift register optimized for software implementation on a 32-bit machine.
Operational design The structure is similar to the Mersenne Twister, a large state made up of previous output words (32 bits each), from which a new output word is generated using linear recurrences modulo 2 over a finite binary field F 2 {\displaystyle F_{2}} . However, a more complex recurrence produces a denser generator polynomial, producing better statistical properties. Each step of the generator reads five words of state: the oldest 32 bits (which may straddle a word boundary if the state size is not a multiple of 32), the newest 32 bits, and three other words in between. Then a series of eight single-word transformations (mostly of the form x := x ⊕ ( x ≫ k ) {\textstyle x:=x\oplus (x\gg k)} and six exclusive-or operations combine those into two words, which become the newest two words of state, one of which will be the output.
Variants Specific parameters are provided for the following generators:
WELL512a WELL521a, WELL521b WELL607a, WELL607b WELL800a, WELL800b WELL1024a, WELL1024b WELL19937a, WELL19937b, WELL19937c WELL21701a WELL23209a, WELL23209b WELL44497a, WELL44497b. Numbers give the state size in bits; letter suffixes denote variants of the same size.
Implementations Implementations of WELL512a, WELL1024a, WELL19937a, WELL19937c, WELL44497a, WELL44497b in C (Free for non-commercial use) Implementations of same algorithms in Scala Implementations in C++ Implementations of WELL512, WELL1024, WELL607 in Java Implementations of WELL512, WELL1024 in BBC BASIC Modified "maximally equidistributed" implementations of WELL19937, WELL44497 in C (Free for non-commercial use) Implementation of WELL512 in C (Public Domain)
References
External links The academic paper, and related articles by François Panneton Pierre L'Ecuyer's publications
