| ERNIE 4 -The power behind Premium Bonds... | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| | EXIT | ERNIE Mark 4 | Photos | ERNIE at the Science Museum 2004 | More Info | Links | | |||||||||||||||||||||
ERNIE Mark 4 ERNIE 4 actually started generating the winning bond numbers in April 2004. As usual for Premium Bond prize draws, the machine and prize draw results were checked independently and rigorously to ensure they were random. To celebrate the introduction of the new version, a special launch event took place at the Science Museum in August.
A press release from NS & I explains the launch of ERNIE 4...
SCIENCE MEETS FINANCE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE NEW FOURTH GENERATION ERNIE 17 August 2004: Premium Bond growth necessitates ERNIE upgrade
"National Savings and Investments (NS&I) today launched ERNIE 4 (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) at the Science Museum, London, bringing all four generations of ERNIE together for the first time. The fourth generation random number generator is responsible for selecting prize winning Premium Bonds each month. The next draw in September will see ERNIE 4 give away 1 million prizes – more than ever before – hence the need for a more powerful ERNIE. In the last 10 years, Premium Bonds have gone from strength to strength. Currently, 25 billion Premium Bonds are owned by 23 million people nationwide. The launch of ERNIE 4 saw all four generations of ERNIE brought together side by side, including ERNIE 1, built in 1956 by the team behind the World War 2 code-breaker Colossus. The exhibition at the Science Museum shows how NS&I, the British institution behind Premium Bonds, has supported the development of smaller and faster technology over the last 50 years. The launch event was hosted by science and mathematics personality, Johnny Ball, and attended by the engineers who designed and built ERNIE 1 almost 50 years ago, as well as those responsible for developing ERNIE 4, from LogicaCMG. Over the years, the notoriously difficult process of generating random numbers has changed significantly, while each of the ERNIEs has got progressively smaller and faster as technology has advanced. ERNIE 1 was 24 sq ft and used gas to generate the numbers, whereas ERNIE 4 uses thermal noise generated by a chip and measuring 0.01 sq ft, requires considerably less space. John Prout, sales director at National Savings and Investments said, ERNIE 4 is the power behind Premium Bonds - able to generate more numbers, more quickly than ever before." End.
*In the 1970s and 80s, Johnny Ball wrote and presented 23 solo television series including ‘Think of a Number’, ‘Think Again’ and ‘Johnny Ball Reveals All'.
ERNIE at the Science Museum 2004
More Info... NS&I spokesman, Mark Brooks, said: "Also, because we have sold so many Premium Bonds, we needed a new machine that could generate 11-digit numbers for the first time." "You have to use a natural source of entropy," says Ed Mills, project manager at Logica CMG, the UK-based company that developed ERNIE 4. "The problem is the difference between a software random number generator and a hardware-based one." It uses a specialised chipset developed by Intel to generate random numbers. Coming up with genuinely random numbers using a computer is deceptively hard because software can only mimic true unpredictability – so eventually patterns can emerge. Software systems are therefore commonly known as "pseudo random number generators". Intel's random number generating chip uses thermal noise – changes in the voltage and heat energy given off - from transistors as its source of randomness. The thermal noise measured is a result of random electron and material behaviour in the transistors. The noise is used to control the speed of an oscillator in order to churn out binary numbers.
Logica also developed ERNIE 3.
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