Why a Mobile Workstation?
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Technical white paper | Building reliability into HP Workstations
Materials and chemical testing
We achieve a high level of I/O, memory, and other component reliability through our adherence to strict standards for materials
selection and our tight control of the HP-approved vendor list. And we don’t stop there. Working in our state-of-the-art
materials analysis lab, our test engineers and materials scientists physically deconstruct workstation components to study
the materials and the chemicals used in them, employing advanced scientic equipment such as spectrometers, electron
microscopes, and X-ray machines.
Selecting high-quality materials and processes is key to achieving high reliability; cutting corners typically results in
premature failures. Our analysis, specications, and selection processes drive designs that use above-standard quality
components. One example of this is memory DIMM sockets. Each socket comprises hundreds of contacts whose material
interface, if not carefully selected, deposited and controlled, can lead to corrosion. A corroded contact can create a
point of failure on a system motherboard in a data-sensitive area. The quality of the materials and the chemicals used
in our DIMM sockets, such as the thickness and quality of the gold plating deposition process, are carefully evaluated.
If necessary, we work with the manufacturers to drive the parts to the proper quality levels. The gold plating standards
chosen by HP Workstations is the result of decades of scientically based reliability testing and is signicantly higher than
what is found on consumer products.
Figure 2. A failing (left) and passing (right) result from the standard socket wear testing procedure. The gray patches in the failing
image are regions where the gold has been inadvertently removed by normal insertion of a memory stick, exposing the base nickel
beneath. This nickel can then corrode, increasing resistance at the contact surface. This can lead to system malfunction and failure.
Figure 1. The HP Workstations Materials Science Lab, a state of the art facility used to test HP Workstation products beyond standard
industry practices.