HP Destroys PCs, Tablets to Make Them Better, Stronger

by Jeffrey Burt

The daylong tour started at the one of the several buildings on the campus that house the various labs.

Prominently displayed on a wall in one of the buildings are the various patents that have been awarded to HP scientists and engineers.

HP engineers spend a lot of time seeing how systems and components react to shock and impact. They’re put on tables that shake and are dropped from various heights. Here an optical drive is hooked up to a machine that tests it in an accelerated drop.

John Emig, R&D electronic technician, talks about two tests—one on the floor, the other one being the blue rig—that can test systems and the boxes they’re shipped in to see how they stand up to vibration.

Hard drives are put into this vibration table and shaken. “We want to check our vendors to see what they’re giving us,” said John Vijil, general engineer at HP.

HP not only wants to ensure the systems are solid and reliable, but also that the boxes they ship in can stand up under the stresses they’ll undergo. The boxes are put through compression tests—like here—and vibration to see how they stand up and at what point they’ll fail.

HP technician Doug Ward shows off a laptop that is undergoing strain tests to see how it holds under physical strain. The red wires attached to the system are strain gauges, which are used to measure how much strain the system is under.

Systems are brought into this semi-anechoic chamber (semi-anechoic means that while sound-proof material is used on the walls and ceiling, none is used on the floor), where the walls and ceilings are lined with fiberglass wedges to absorb as much sound as possible. Microphones are aimed at the systems as they are tested to determine how much sound they emit.

Systems from PCs to servers are run in all sorts of conditions, from extreme temperatures to high altitudes. HP technicians have a number of chambers designed to test them in all environments. Here a laptop is in a machine that can adjust temperature and altitude conditions.

Computing systems are also used in coastal environments that come with their own challenges. Test products are put in this machine, which can simulate a salty ocean fog.

HP uses a range of X-ray systems to get a detailed look at what’s going on in the system, from the quality of the metal and the solder used to keep the systems together to any non-metal substances on the device, including drinks, greases and food. This X-ray system gives engineers a real-time look at all facets of the systems.

How systems perform in extreme temperatures is a key focus of the testing. These custom-made boards are used to test how memory systems react to temperature variations. They’re put in machines that constantly change the temperature from 0 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius and are kept there until they fail.

In HP’s Reliability Lab, robots are built to test everything on systems. One robot opens and closes laptops 25,000 or more times, another drags points of arms across keyboards and touchpads, and yet another pokes constantly at the screen of a laptop. The robot pictured is testing the fittings in the water cooling system that will be used in HP’s new Apollo 8000 supercomputer.

Here is another semi-anechoic chamber for testing the noise generated by systems. However, while the first chamber was used to simply measure the sound, this one in the Regulatory Lab is used to ensure it complies with various regulations and certification requirements.

The Satimo SG64 machine is used to measure how well notebooks and tablets with cellular connections are operating. The “SG” stands for Stargate, given how the setup looks so much like the one seen in the movie.

Among the many jobs at the Houston campus is getting servers assembled and ready to ship.

The Houston campus was the headquarters for Compaq before HP bought the PC company in 2002, and there are still plenty of reminders of Compaq’s presence. Here is one of a number of banners that hang throughout the buildings.

There are other relics from Compaq’s past, from posters to—here—the occasional old systems that are stored here and there.