Slashdot Mirror
Smart Monitoring PC Hardware Launched By NVIDIA
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA has just introduced a new open-industry standard for real-time monitoring and control of PC power supplies, chassis, and water cooling systems. Dubbed ESA, which stands for Enthusiast System Architecture, the company hopes the standard will be adopted across the industry. A new wave of ESA compliant hardware that can be monitored and controlled via a standard interface could ensue, like smart health-monitoring power supplies and other components, that would increase system stability and reliability. 'The ESA standard is built around the USB HID (Human Interface Device) specification and has been submitted to the USB-if HID subcommittee for discussion and approval. ESA is essentially a hardware and software interface that takes data collected by analog sensors and converts it to digital information that can accessed via software. Below are a handful of slides taken from an NVIDIA-produced presentation on ESA.'"
I hope the sensors work better than the ones in my HP printers. While it is may be interesting all the things they can detect, jam in tray 3, under fuser, etc. They really annoy the hell out of the users.
Well, I would ramble on more about voltage flux warnings etc, but I have to run and change my print toner... I have less than 1000 pages left!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
In NVIDIA's new open-industry standard, you can monitor components inside your computer.
In soviet Russia, components inside your computer monitor YOU!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I currently have to use several programs and a manual fan controller to for half the capability this system offers. To read temps I have to use different programs for motherboard, case, and GPU, and several fans aren't even controllable, in hardware or software. I have little understanding of the temperature distribution in my case. Getting all this information and more into one integrated hardware/software package is a feature I'd gladly pay more for.
Nothing like primary source material, folks.
I really grow tired of Slashdot linking to another site that describes a web page, instead of just linking to the page itself.
Please help metamoderate.
This would be cool if it allowed real time interactivity with the devices rather than just monitoring. Think about it, being able to monitor and control devices remotely... It can be done now, but it's highly device dependant... With an open protocol, lmsensors would become much easier to install...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
All I can say is getting LINUX to recognize sensors on various motherboards is a pain in the Ass. Any standardization in this area would be great.
Isn't this what the System Management Bus (SMBus) is for? SMB also has the advantage of not requiring hubs to provide multiple ports since its a true multi-slave two wire bus. (Multi master, too.) Why not just provide a breakout connector on the motherboard to chain more devices? It is 100-400kbps but most of the peripherals don't need to report more than a few bits per second of diagnostic info anyway.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
From my brief look at nVidia's site, it looks like it's more an internal standard than external. IPMI stops at the service processor. The service processor, in turn, used as many arbitrary busses/protocols internally to gather the data and report it back (and while the service processor *might* help you with fan-control versus throttling using OEM commands, the sensor interface strictly speaking only mandates reporting, not controlling). Such a system, for example, would do perfectly fine at reporting on all components explicitly integrated by the manufacturer. However, stick in an arbitrary graphics card, and no sensor value for it's temp/fan will appear as an IPMI-reported device. If a hypothetical standard existed within the case, monitoring may work better without having to buy a single-vendor solution that planned for all that, and you could hypothetically monitor and control arbitrary installed devices. Also, if intelligent about it, more tradeoffs can be made. When you can send instruction to both the GPU and it's cooling device, then for performance you could request that the cooling ramp up whatever it takes, but then go to acoustic and it would throttle the GPU instead of ramping up fans. An IPMI compliant BMC that was also ESA compliant might generate SDRs based on some sort of ESA-discovery.
nVidia isn't the only game in town talking about internal standards for this, Intel for one definitely has been pushing their own ideas in terms of moving standardization to the interior of the systems.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Yeah, except there's no standard for I2C controllers (making software a nightmare - how many I2C controllers does lm-sensors need to support? How many are not supported?), likewise no standard for certain sensor types with I2C interfaces. (How many different temperature sensor drivers does lm-sensors have?)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Why don't they fold more video monitors (and enthusiast monitors like water temperature of water coolers) into SNMP or SNMP2? (Or have they already?) Why do we need another standard?
SNMP is an industry standard, well-supported, flexible with multiple attractive interfaces... pretty sure it can be realtime and has the added bonuses of being networkable by default.
Today's motherboards use I2C/SMBus for sensor access, and it is a total mess. There are hundreds of models of sensor chips that need drivers, and there's no way to know the mapping from sensor numbers to the real world (which fan is "fan 0"?). Then some vendors add microcontrollers that are not on the SMBus and have totally undocumented interfaces (hello AIGuru). I haven't looked at ESA, but hopefully it solves some of these problems.