What this is
The Quantum Entropy Reservoir is Quantum Splicing in practice: it harvests genuine quantum randomness from IBM ibm_fez (156-qubit Heron r2), measurement outcomes from carefully chosen circuits whose output distributions are dominated by quantum superposition collapse rather than classical noise, and splices it directly into a classical cryptographic pipeline. Raw collapse events are conditioned through SHAKE-256, stored in a consume-once pool, and fed into an HMAC-DRBG output stage compliant with NIST SP 800-90A. Health tests run per NIST SP 800-90B before any entropy enters the pool. The reservoir self-throttles to avoid burning IBM job quota at idle.
Why it matters
Cryptographic key generation is only as random as its entropy source. Most "quantum random number generators" sold commercially use optical shot noise, a physical quantum process, but not the same as collapse of a multi-qubit entangled state. Our reservoir uses actual quantum circuit measurement on a 156-qubit processor. The NIST 800-90A/B/C compliance chain means the entropy can be used directly in production key generation, not just as a novelty.
Technical Specification
- -Source: IBM ibm_fez, 156-qubit Heron r2 measurement collapse
- -Conditioning: SHAKE-256 (FIPS 202)
- -Output: HMAC-DRBG per NIST SP 800-90A
- -Health tests: NIST SP 800-90B, startup + continuous
- -Pool discipline: consume-once (no reuse of harvested entropy)
- -Fallback: OS CSPRNG if IBM quota exhausted
- -Status: internal; integrated into PQCEngine key generation