NVIDIA Introduces ESA - Enthusiast System Architecture
by Wesley Fink on November 5, 2007 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Who Is Supporting ESA?
The list of ESA supporters will always be in development, but the list of companies who have agreed to support the new ESA standard is already impressive.
The fact that both HP and Dell - the top two PC makers in the world - have already signed on for support of ESA will certainly go a long way to ensure its success. Supporters also include top enthusiast PC makers like Falcon Northwest and Alienware. Tier One motherboard manufacturers ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI are also ESA supporters, as well as a wide cross section of power supply manufacturers and cooler companies.
This level of industry support bodes well for the future of ESA as a standard for the computer enthusiast. Time will tell if the standard becomes even more widely adopted. If it does, you will see the supporter list grow exponentially.
Industry Comments
"The industry-standard device communication protocol provided with ESA enables a rich set of tools for tuning PC hardware performance. These tools offer PC enthusiasts more flexible and granular control over primary system support components. For example, the ESA standard communication method is used in Dell's unique LightFX architecture, and will help accelerate development of deeply immersive ambient lighting in PC games."
- Kevin Kettler, PhD (CTO), DELL
"ESA is a communication protocol that ties together all the key aspects of a system. But more significant to HP is the fact that we can potentially use ESA enabled technology to create a unique and immediately noticeable experience benefit to our customers."
- Rahul Sood, CTO HP Global Gaming Business, HP
"Falcon Northwest has been bullish on the ESA concept from the start. Tying together information and control from disparate PC components has never been possible until ESA. We're looking forward to building ESA-enabled systems that will give our tech-savvy clientèle a new level of feedback and tweaking for Falcon PCs."
- Kelt Reeves, Falcon Northwest
"In addition to the awesome capabilities provided to hardware enthusiasts, ESA also offers system builders an efficient mechanism for debugging the hardware inside systems. In the past, this has been an arduous and almost Herculean-task. ESA is proving to be instrumental in helping us reduce overall support costs."
- Wallace Santos, Maingear
The list of ESA supporters will always be in development, but the list of companies who have agreed to support the new ESA standard is already impressive.
The fact that both HP and Dell - the top two PC makers in the world - have already signed on for support of ESA will certainly go a long way to ensure its success. Supporters also include top enthusiast PC makers like Falcon Northwest and Alienware. Tier One motherboard manufacturers ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI are also ESA supporters, as well as a wide cross section of power supply manufacturers and cooler companies.
This level of industry support bodes well for the future of ESA as a standard for the computer enthusiast. Time will tell if the standard becomes even more widely adopted. If it does, you will see the supporter list grow exponentially.
Industry Comments
"The industry-standard device communication protocol provided with ESA enables a rich set of tools for tuning PC hardware performance. These tools offer PC enthusiasts more flexible and granular control over primary system support components. For example, the ESA standard communication method is used in Dell's unique LightFX architecture, and will help accelerate development of deeply immersive ambient lighting in PC games."
- Kevin Kettler, PhD (CTO), DELL
"ESA is a communication protocol that ties together all the key aspects of a system. But more significant to HP is the fact that we can potentially use ESA enabled technology to create a unique and immediately noticeable experience benefit to our customers."
- Rahul Sood, CTO HP Global Gaming Business, HP
"Falcon Northwest has been bullish on the ESA concept from the start. Tying together information and control from disparate PC components has never been possible until ESA. We're looking forward to building ESA-enabled systems that will give our tech-savvy clientèle a new level of feedback and tweaking for Falcon PCs."
- Kelt Reeves, Falcon Northwest
"In addition to the awesome capabilities provided to hardware enthusiasts, ESA also offers system builders an efficient mechanism for debugging the hardware inside systems. In the past, this has been an arduous and almost Herculean-task. ESA is proving to be instrumental in helping us reduce overall support costs."
- Wallace Santos, Maingear
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PeteRoy - Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - link
BTX was a much cheaper easier solution than this, it's too bad that the hate for intel blinded people with how great BTX is.Bluestealth - Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - link
Well... it was more of Intel coming along and saying... wouldn't it be nice if you retooled all your factories for us?... I am sure in their mind it made perfect sense... however I don't think anyone else saw profit in it for them.What we really need is for Video Cards to start reigning in their power requirements,. It is ridiculous that you can have a nearly silent very high end system, but throw in a video card and the whole thing turns into a mini-cyclone... it makes makes up for all the noise and heat that the rest of the industry has worked on.
This whole ESA thing is just another gimmick that I don't want or need. I hope this thing fails so I don't have to pay for the additional expense of having it in the hardware I purchase.
Odeen - Monday, November 5, 2007 - link
I propose that nVidia should not be allowed to release any new chipsets or chipset utilities until they fix ActiveArmor. That piece of networking genius sucked too many hours out of my life.FrankThoughts - Monday, November 5, 2007 - link
What exactly was the point of this article? Seriously! I about puked when I saw the "industry quotes" - taken, I might add, straight from the NVIDIA slides. That was some quality writing, I tell you what! I'm not at all surprised that Falcon, HP/Voodoo, Dell/Alienware, etc. think this is great, because that's just one more way for them to try and pretend their insanely priced "gamer systems" are worth purchasing.I don't know that ESA is going to be a complete waste of time, but it looks more like another way to charge more money for "enthusiast" components. The stupid 1100W and higher power supplies are already making me sick. Do we really need three graphics cards? Oh, wait! There's a huge difference between 4xAA and 8xAA that we MUST HAVE!
FWIW the GPU fans that start out quiet and then spin up to insanely loud levels are not what I want for the rest of my system. I'm much more interested in a reasonble performing system that stays quiet than uber-monitored hardware that lets me know it's overheating. As if the fans spinning at 10000 RPM weren't a good indication of that already.
Wesley Fink - Monday, November 5, 2007 - link
Since you have the nVidia slides for ESA you obviously work for another website. What did you post for ESA?emboss - Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - link
Nice dodge. Actually, not really that nice, too obvious.FrankThoughts - Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - link
You don't have to write for a website to find slides, or quotes. Like this material http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1194260551610.html">direct from the NVIDIA press release. That takes care of the Dell and HP quotes. I have written nothing about ESA online, other than these comments. I have, however, seen a couple different PPT files on the subject. Most of those are no longer available, but it's amazing what turns up on the internet now and then. I think I even had a draft version of the ESA presentation before NVIDIA even held their Editor's Day! LOLI appreciate that you were somewhat cautious in the conclusion, but that whole section on industry support and ESA problem solving just smacked of marketing rather than reporting. Numerous other sentences were ripped directly from the press release/marketing materials. If this were an English assignment, you'd be in serious jeopardy for plagiarism. Considering you write for a respected (mostly) publication, this might be even worse.
The truth is that we still know basically nothing about the actual ESA hardware and software. Will it rock my world or will it just add bloat and cost? I can tell you how many times I've used nTune (a couple tries initially, followed by a return to the BIOS as it was more useful). I doubt ESA software is going to be dramatically better. Different, sure, but probably not better.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ...">[T also has most of the slides, for the interested.
FrankThoughts - Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - link
That was supposed to be http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ...">TardOCP. Seems the comment system doesn't like brackets within links or something.vhx - Monday, November 5, 2007 - link
I sure they implement and code this better than nTune, which is so buggy in its current state.Ytterbium - Monday, November 5, 2007 - link
WS-Management has been around for a while and was developed for server for the same sort of purposes.