Tech News
NVIDIA pushes PC performance with Enthusiast System Architecture
By Stevie Smith
Nov 6, 2007, 13:37 GMT

Leading graphics processor manufacturer NVIDIA has this week announced details of its new Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA), which is describes as an open, royalty-free standard "for the real-time monitoring and control of PC power supplies, chassis, and water-cooling systems."

In layman’s terms ESA has been designed to provide computer manufacturers and dedicated PC enthusiasts with complete control of a rig’s noise levels, speed performance, and heat emissions in order to hone overall effectiveness of the hardware.

"The Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) specifies an information protocol that system components can use to ‘communicate’ with each other to adjust operating parameters, and relay important system information back to the user," explains NVIDIA’s official press release. "By implementing ESA, PC manufacturers and do-it-yourself enthusiasts can now build finely-tuned and higher performance PCs than they could have with existing proprietary solutions."

Chatting to industry watchers at online magazine Custom PC, NVIDIA PR manager Adam Foat outlined that the arrival of ESA "will afford end users the ability to monitor and control these devices, all in real time," while also providing a valuable way for them to achieve the very best in performance, reliability, and overclocking from their systems.

Specifically, NVIDIA’s technology addresses computer elements whose communication process is not governed by a system bus, instead allowing them to communicate directly through the hardware’s operating system.

The ESA component will include an embedded communication microcontroller, which will join to the host PC through an external or cable USB connection, or internally via a motherboard header.

Custom PC goes on to say that a product presentation given by California-based NVIDIA revealed that the ESA component was capable of controlling various hardware facets from a single screen through a first-time OpenGL-powered 3D interface.

Interestingly, from a manufacturing point of view, Mr. Foat also highlighted that license fees won’t be required from those companies looking to incorporate ESA as NVIDIA believes its introduction is "good for the whole industry; we need everything to come together." He also said that ESA will arrive as "completely open," and that "anyone can write software for it."

NVIDIA’s software, while not offering anything that cannot be accessed by users in an individual sense, brings component alteration and honing into one application so as to ensure swift and easy tweaking without trial and error repetition.

ESA will be compatible with Microsoft Windows operating systems when it launches, but NVIDIA suggests that its open structure will see the open-source community engineering system monitoring software for Linux operating systems without too much hassle.