Deserved or not, Mersenne Twister is somewhat famous among laymen like myself for being very fast relative to it's reasonably high quality. If you can point me at an RNG that is both faster and higher quality, I will be genuinely in your debt.
My layman's understanding is that George Marsaglia's xorshift generator[1] is considerably faster than the Mersenne Twister while still providing high quality randomness.
I've also seen WELL512[2] mentioned in a few places, but I don't know much more about it than the name.
