News: Nvidia announces ESA specification

[Chierin]

Every so often, I sit back and marvel at just how astounding the PC industry really is. Where else are you consistently treated to new waves of products that offer significant performance improvements, often at lower prices? It's more than just the pace of innovation that impresses me, though. The fact that enthusiasts can put together systems from individual components designed and built by a wide range of manufacturers and have them all work together harmoniously is a testament to not only the versatility of the platform, but the strength of standards that guarantee interoperability within it.

However, despite our ability to build systems from a variety of parts, we often know very little about the state of our PCs once they're assembled and running. We can monitor a few things, of course, such as the speed and temperature of our processors and graphics chips. Some motherboards also report fan speeds and system temperatures, but that still leaves us pretty blind to what's going on under the hood. What's worse, there are no standards that govern how these variables are reported, making monitoring what little we can difficult if not impossible with a single application.

Now most folks probably don't need or even want to monitor every little system variable from the comfort of their desktop. But enthusiasts aren't most folks; we baby our PCs, taking great care to carefully tweak their configurations to deliver an uncanny blend of silence, stability, and performance. We want as much information about and control of our hardware as possible, which is why Nvidia has drafted an Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) specification that aims to standardize hardware monitoring and control over system components. Join us as we explore the ESA spec and the potential it holds.

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