US Patent 7571201 Method for distributed joint pseudo random decision making

A method for making joint pseudo random decisions in a distributed program comprises providing a common original seed value to a plurality of processes in the distributed program, generating the same sequence of pseudo random numbers for each of said plurality of processes using the common original seed, and using pseudo random numbers in the sequence to make successive joint pseudo random decisions. If a process has to make a pseudo random decision that is not joint, it uses another seed or method.