System builders will be able to supervise peripherals more carefully following the launch of an industry standard for real-time monitoring and control of PC peripheral performance.
An initiative lead by NVIDIA in conjunction with Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Coolermaster and Thermaltake, among others, has led to the Enthusiast System Architecture.
According to the companies, the standard is based on the current USB HIB (Human Interface Device) class specification and will support chassis, power supplies, and water and air cooling peripherals.
Previously there was no standard communication protocol that let peripherals report essential data such as temperature, thermal, voltage and air flow attributes to users, NVIDIA said. "Tying together information and control from disparate PC components has never been possible until ESA," said Kelt Reeves, CEO of Falcon Northwest, in a statement.
The ESA allows manufacturers to embed digital and analog sensors into their devices, which will communicate real-time data about PC operating conditions to users. The ESA's logging capabilities let system builders and manufacturers cheaply and easily identify any peripheral-related operating abnormalities and therefore resolve support issues, NVIDIA said.
Wallace Santos, founder of system builder Maingear, said ESA's efficient mechanism for debugging hardware inside systems will make an arduous task much simpler and reduce overall support costs.
ESA-compliant systems, including motherboards and components, will be available starting at the end of this month, the companies said.
Channel News and Analysis 
