HP Labs: the Science of Technology
by Jarred Walton on July 1, 2014 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- HP
- Mobile Workstation
- Laptops
- Enterprise
- server
- Tour
Reliability Lab
Much of what we saw at the Reliability Lab was just a variation on the Environmental and Materials Labs. Here, complete products – notebooks, desktops, workstations, servers, tablets, etc. – are subjected to vibration, bumps, thermals, and even electromagnetic discharge. One demonstration had a "gun" of sorts that would send out a controlled static shock. There was an older HP EliteBook laptop (which had likely been abused for many such demonstrations) where the shock caused it to reset. Another thermal chamber was set to 85F and had a Windows tablet running a loop of 3DMark 06 while connected to an external display.
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Besides the temperature/vibration/electromagnetic testing, the Reliability Lab also had long-term wear testing that was taking place. One station had a machine that would repeatedly open and close a couple of laptops several times a minute (and one display had a section that had failed during this test). Another test was for a barcode scanner and magnetic card reader, which had a robotic arm pressing the scan button and periodically swiping a card. Elsewhere there was a "keyboard exerciser" where keys on a keyboard would be pressed a couple times per second, and there was a separate machine in the room that could be used to measure the amount of force required to actuate the keys on a keyboard – or the buttons on a mouse – so that they could see how the keyboards would wear over time. In a related set of tests, keyboards were tested for wear and tear on their lettering with a robotic arm constantly rubbing the keys, and a similar device would press on the edges of a laptop display repeatedly.
HP noted that testing in many of these apparatuses might go on for weeks or longer to see how they would hold up under continued use (and abuse). While I can't comment specifically on how well the testing mimics real-world usage (e.g. the nub rubbing on a keyboard isn't quite the same as an actual finger that will leave oily residue), it's definitely good to see this level of attention to detail.
Electromagnetic Lab
The final lab was actually at a separate HP location, located a few miles away from the main HP Houston campus. The Houston Regulatory Lab has been around for 30 years and is used for testing compliance with various government regulations. When it was first created, it had several open air testing areas – it was miles away from any other major buildings so this was sufficient. Over time, the proliferation of new technologies eventually required the creation of shielded environments.
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The most impressive was a 10-meter long room (probably 4 meters wide and 4 meters tall as well), which at first looks like another Semi-Anechoic chamber. In fact this is actually a room for testing radio emissions from a device, with two large antenna structures located on different ends of the room. The outside of the room is shielded with thousands of ferrite squares, and inside of those are the usual pyramid-shaped foam structures you'd see in a semi-anechoic chamber, only these are of different sizes and they are also carbon laced to help them absorb radio waves. The larger "spikes" are on the most reflective surfaces, while smaller spikes are used near the corners of the room where the reflected waves are apparently easier to absorb (or something like that). Needless to say, the instant they closed the door to the room all of our cell phones immediately lost connection, though all it took was for the door to be opened and even twenty feet away I was able to reconnect to the HP wireless network.
Other testing done at this lab included testing of WiFi transmit strength in the Satimo chamber. Here they had a "Stargate" ring of antennas around a small pedestal. The pedestal could then rotate while the ring of antennas would take readings, and the result is a chart of WiFi strength for a device. Ideally you want a device to have equally good reception in every direction, so that it doesn't matter where the users is facing or how they're holding the device. The result of the testing would generate color blobs that show signal strength.
Finally, there were additional rooms testing how devices would react to various forms of interference; this was called "immunity" testing. Some of the interference would be induced over the power cables, USB cables, serial/printer cables, display cables, etc. Tests were also done for brown-outs, voltage interrupts, power surges, and so forth. One test had equipment that would simulate a lightning strike on the power grid as one extreme example, and nearby was another electrostatic testing device where they could repeatedly shock laptops and other devices to see how they would respond.
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blackmagnum - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Please consider whether the pictures should accompany their relevant paragraphs to give the article a more attractive reading layout?gostan - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
This tour shows you why HP is struggling. Look at those products! And of all the clips in this world, they picked Meg Whitman's interview!!??aaronjgoodrich - Thursday, July 3, 2014 - link
Explain your comment please? I can guess why you responded like you had.. but I would not like to assume. I need to hear you out first.HardwareDufus - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
These guys work in Little dungeons... tiny Little isolated cubes... it's difficult to interact with each other... They need to open those spaces up in the Multimedia Lab and Software Testing Lab..vLsL2VnDmWjoTByaVLxb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I know the software validation ain't that great as I was stuck with an Elitebook 850 G1 for 6 months that could barely operate after hibernation/sleep. Called HP for support and they were useless.ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq//sp66001-66500/sp6611... Is the issue/fix in detail, long after HP had told me again and again it was on my side. Kinda shameful I wasted so many hours on trying to fix that or that a bug that large actually exists. HP used to be such a great engineering company!
aaronjgoodrich - Thursday, July 3, 2014 - link
Wait, so a software fix which was readily available but not applied to your system is "HP's" engineering issue? I think that's a common sense issue there. No hardware was failing. It was a software issue. Plain as day from the link you provided. Maybe you hadn't applied all the hotfixes/patches to the system you were working on? "Synaptics TouchPad/ForcePad Driver " isn't a problem with engineering of hardware. Synaptics isn't HP. Think again.NikAwesome - Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - link
They should be responsible because they chose that part. The whole "experience" should be tested and guaranteed by HP because it is their product. They care about HW and SW, that's why Apple has an enormous satisfaction customer ratio (at the cost of being proprietary and not-open, they are control freaks)NikAwesome - Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - link
Edit: They should be responsible because they chose that part. The whole "experience" should be tested and guaranteed by HP because it is their product. They SHOULD care about HW and SW, that's why Apple has an enormous satisfaction customer ratio (at the cost of being proprietary and not-open, they are control freaks)vLsL2VnDmWjoTByaVLxb - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
The issue existed for 5 months. I was able to repeat it on other hardware. HP refused to look into it. That is a breakdown in engineering AND support."No hardware was failing. It was a software issue."
You do realize that HP encompasses both sides of the spectrum, right?
"Maybe you hadn't applied all the hotfixes/patches to the system you were working on?"
I had, of course. That is newb 101 tech stuff to try, dude.
""Synaptics TouchPad/ForcePad Driver " isn't a problem with engineering of hardware. Synaptics isn't HP. "
One wonders why HP would allow faulty software to come with their hardware? Dual edged sword. HP lost quite a bit of revenue based on their response to this one issue. Engineering (improper validation for basic functionality) and support (Customer couldn't possibly be right on this one) fail.
Samus - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Coming from the family Tandy 1000SL 8086, my Dad knew I needed a new PC, one to myself, and one day he came home with a Compaq Prolinea 4/25s. My first PC.After a SoundBlasterCD kit to add audio and CD-ROM, 8MB memory upgrade and a 500MB Maxtor hard drive to upgrade the 120GB Quantum, it had seem to reach its limits.
Until I got a 486/75MHz overdrive chip for my birthday.
And what was really facinating about this upgrade was a jumper on the motherboard that selected between 25MHz and 33MHz. Curiously, I moved it to 33MHz, and all the sudden, I had a 486/100MHz Overdrive (something the PC wasn't, on paper, capable of.)
My first "overclock" and on an OEM system. That was a great PC. Eventually I ran OS/2 Warp, then Windows 95. Around the time Windows 98 came out, I built my first PC with an ASUS motherboard and an AMD K5 chip, which I also mildly overclocked to 120MHz from 100MHz. It wouldn't run 133MHz without eventually freezing ;)
Good times. Ever since, I've been a big fan of Compaq "enterprise-grade" hardware, which today we know as HP Proliant servers, the best selling servers in the world. They're annoyingly proprietary with their drive rails, Softpaq drivers, and torx screws, but having owned a Prolinea 20 years ago, I've been used to that since.
I'm glad to know a lot of the engineers that evaluated my first PC are still at HP. Because I found it at my parents house a few years ago and fired it up, and it booted right to the Windows 95 desktop with Rise of the Triad, Warcraft 2, and Big Red Racing for good measure.