Magnetic tunnel junction as a real-time entropy source: Field-Programmable Gate Array based random bit generation without post-processing

Abstract

We demonstrate a method to generate application-ready truly random bits from a magnetic tunnel junction driven by a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). We implement a real-time feedback loop that stabilizes the switching probability near 50\% and apply an XOR operation, both on the FPGA, to suppress short-term correlations, together mitigating long-term drift and bias in the bitstream. This combined approach enables NIST-compliant random bit generation at 5~Mb/s without post-processing, providing a practical hardware solution for fast and reliable true random number generation. Beyond cryptographic applications, these capabilities open opportunities for stochastic hardware accelerators, probabilistic computing, and large-scale modeling where real-time access to unbiased randomness is essential.

7 pages 6 figures and 1 table

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