Why a Mobile Workstation?
Technical white paper | Building reliability into HP Workstations
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Enterprise-class qualication
We carefully qualify many components that are selected for their enterprise-class reliability and performance, such as
ECC memory, SSDs, graphics cards, and SAS hard drives. Our qualication processes start with industry-standard tests
and benchmarks, but go above and beyond to also make use of proprietary HP test tools and techniques that have
their origins in our long history in the workstation market. These processes comprehensively cover the software,
hardware, and rmware interactions of the components with the system and other components. Proprietary hardware
and software test tools backed by dedicated test developers, enable HP to test and validate new, state-of-the-art
subsystems and high-speed interfaces before still-to-be-developed third party devices are available.
In some cases, this rigorous qualication enables us to nd issues that have been previously overlooked by our
component suppliers. Our strong relationships and inuence with these partners enable us to obtain and integrate
improved components into our systems, many of which are unique to HP Workstations. Frequently, we discover
that very large expansion cards, like workstation graphics, require additional mechanical reinforcement to pass the
rigorous requirements of worldwide shipping. Our team of mechanical engineers works closely with companies like
Intel, NVIDIA® and AMD to produce these HP Workstation-only reinforcements. This helps ensure that the entire
product arrives in working condition and continues to function at peak performance throughout its lifetime-even
when packed with large, powerful graphics and compute cards.
Components in our systems often use rmware and driver versions with HP-specic enhancements or improvements to
help ensure a seamless user experience.
Exacting standards
We are unyielding in our adherence to HP quality standards. For example, the power supply unit (PSU), like the rest of
the system, undergoes rigorous testing to verify functionality which includes extensive temperature, input voltage
and frequency testing. We also give special attention to the choice of aluminum electrolytic capacitors. Through
component evaluation in our materials analysis lab, we know that poorly constructed capacitors can lead to bulging
and venting and result in an early failure. We examine capacitors at a molecular level to ensure consistent quality, and
also work directly with the suppliers on construction and enhanced reliability testing in order to ensure the highest
quality possible. We require our power supply vendors to justify changes in capacitors by providing evidence of
compliance and test results for not only industry standards but also HP-designed reliability testing.
By enabling our workstation engineers to select better components, we increase our design margins and improve the
overall reliability of HP Workstations.
A few other examples of our exacting quality standards:
• We qualify and test every DIMM type, vendor, and revision used in our workstations.
• Compared to common industry practices, we use highly-rated critical electrical components for system stability and
long lifetime, as dictated by our design standards.
• We use multi-point thermal sampling to optimize the acoustic and thermal performance of HP Workstations.
• We develop and perform reliability test methods to check every connector in a system for durability and reliability
over the lifetime of the product.
• Manufacturing processes are tightly controlled to ensure that any component change that could aect reliability is
carefully evaluated by our engineers.
• Every stacked-core inductor in the product is tested for proper materials composition and construction.