"Today, with the coming introduction of the NVIDIA 780i chipset, NVIDIA is looking to make serious changes to what is possible with enthusiast systems by launching a new technology platform. The name of the new standard is ESA - Enthusiast System Architecture. Its goal is to provide information and control to enthusiasts not just for NVIDIA motherboards and video cards, but to provide that information and control for many other components in an ESA-enabled system. The actual protocol is OS independent. This is very important for the future of ESA, as it will eventually allow ESA to operate with any platform."
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Member since:2005-08-19
I am not sure you understand what this is.
ESA is a standard that is being submitted to the USB HID group for formalization as a USB device spec. This is analogous to the spec. for USB drives, sound devices, mice, keyboards, etc. where (in theory) you just plug in one of those devices with a standardized spec. and then use a generic driver on any USB-capable platform. For example, my USB headphones do not require a special Linux driver; the headphones implement the USB audio spec, which the Linux kernel supports, so they just work.
The idea with the ESA standard is that you will plug your fans, PSU, front panel displays, etc. into USB ports, and an ESA-capable program will expose the functionality of those devices through a generic USB-ESA driver.
My understanding, therefore, is that nVidia does not "need" to work with device manufacturers any more than the Firefox team needs to work with extension drivers -- i.e. anyone can write an extension -- although the standard itself could, of course, be improved over time with manufacturer feedback.
Adding ESA support to an OS like Linux would be very straightforward. One person would write a usb-esa kernel module, and some other people will end up writing GTK or whatever applications to expose the generic interface of ESA-capable hardware devices.
I believe ESA would be wonderful if many device manufacturers support it. The current enthusiast "smart fan", case front panel, and temperature probe interfaces are all very proprietary and poorly documented, so it is difficult to buy a case, motherboard, and fans that will work together with all their advertised cooling-related features enabled.
But yes, I am cynical about this...
Member since:2005-11-21
I asked what was the kernel teams stances on adding another level of complexity that will require the component parts to be redesigned to communicate over USB which then will require motherboard manufacturers to redesign this as well.
This sounds great for system design testing.
Sounds overkill and cumbersome to build oversized cases to accommodate cooling systems for the sake of joe sandbox who wants to customize every little setting until they screw it up.
If nVidia wants this to take off I'd suggest they produce some motherboards, power supplies, cooling systems in the idea of cases they want and show how this would work.
Otherwise, it wreaks that nVidia is worried that Intel and AMD with their inroads into graphics scares the piss out of them.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow."During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.
Member since:
2005-11-21
What does the Linux Kernel Team foresee, OpenBSD team, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, etc., all foresee as possibilities?
How does nVidia plan to work with AMD, with Intel, with Apple, etc?
To me it seems the greatest amount of work, outside of their own Windows platform, will be within the FOSS Community.
I see the standard hardware vendors listed, but none of the people who actually have an operating system to access these features, outside of the Windows platform.