The Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) specification is a

royalty-free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standard ...

protocol for two-way communication of PC components. Announced in 2007, ESA is used for monitoring temperature of computer hardware components such as the

computer case A computer case, also known as a computer chassis, is the enclosure that contains most of the hardware of a personal computer. The components housed inside the case (such as the CPU, motherboard, memory, mass storage devices, power supply unit a ...

and

power supply unit A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a res ...

. The first and last official release of the ESA specification is version 1.0, released in 2007. The ESA USB specification was created by a joint venture between

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

Logitech Logitech International S.A. ( ; often shortened to Logi) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software, with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Newark, California. The company has offices throughout Europe, ...

and several other companies.USB HID modification submission version HUT1_12v2 to USB.org The protocol remains open and royalty-free; but, no manufacturers are currently utilizing its specification at this time. The last known devices to utilize the ESA specifications were the Dell XPS 730x and

Alienware Alienware is an American computer hardware subsidiary of Dell. Their product range is dedicated to gaming computers which can be identified by their alien-themed designs. Alienware was founded in 1996 by Nelson Gonzalez and Alex Aguila, and is ...

Area-51 ALX computer systems that utilized the ESA specification to control its fans, LEDs, and motorized doors as well as the monitoring of available

Water cooling Cooling tower and water discharge of a nuclear power plant Water cooling is a method of heat removal from components and industrial equipment. Evaporative cooling using water is often more efficient than air cooling. Water is inexpensive and non ...

systems such as the Dell XPS 730x's Dell H₂Ceramic Cooling System. The ESA specification is built around the current

USB human interface device class In computing, the USB human interface device class (USB HID class) is a part of the USB specification for computer peripherals: it specifies a device class (a type of computer hardware) for human interface devices such as keyboards, mice, game con ...

specification and ESA was sent to the

USB Implementers Forum The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) is a nonprofit organization created to promote and support USB (Universal Serial Bus). Its main activities are the promotion and marketing of USB, Wireless USB, USB On-The-Go, and the maintenance of the speci ...

HID subcommittee for discussion and approval in early 2007. The USBIF approved and inserted the ESA specification into the USB HID specifications as an extension in late 2007 (''reference paper needed''). All ESA-certified devices must pass

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

2.0 logo compliance. Readings of temperature, voltage, current, power, activity level, water level, status, position and so on can be monitored via

specifications. At the time of release, these devices could be controlled and monitored via the

nTune NVIDIA System Tools (previously called nTune) is a discontinued collection of utilities for accessing, monitoring, and adjusting system components, including temperature and voltages with a graphical user interface within Windows, rather than th ...

application, while operating mode, voltages, rpm while also allowing these devices to be adjusted in the utility. ESA devices have a

microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable i ...

that integrates a USB 2.0-compliant full-speed device controller and ESA-compliant hardware components connects to the

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

via a USB cable. ESA-compliant hardware components are seen as 'Collections'. Within the collections there are 'Zones'. Sensors and controls are organized into zones. Only one software implementation exists; it is Nvidia's proprietary "System Tools with ESA Support" which only works on nForce-based motherboards and only runs on Windows.

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20071018025526/http://www.nvidia.com/esa (Page no longer exists) *
Tech Brief
*
Certification Requirements

November 5, 2007

March 13, 2008 Computer-related introductions in 2007 Nvidia Open standards USB Communications protocols {{Computer-stub

See also

References

External links