The United Nations’ World E-waste Monitor estimates that the world generates over 60 million tonnes of e-waste yearly. Moreover, this quantity is rising 5 occasions as quick as e-waste recycling. A lot of this waste comes from prematurely discarded digital units.
Many enterprises comply with a normal three-year substitute cycle, assuming older computer systems are inefficient. Nonetheless, many of those units are nonetheless purposeful and will carry out nicely with minor upgrades or upkeep. The problem is, nobody is aware of what the weak factors are for a specific machine, or what the wanted upkeep is, and the diagnostics could be too expensive and time-consuming. It’s simpler to only purchase model new laptops.
When shopping for a used automotive, dealerships and particular person patrons can entry every automotive’s specific CarFax report, detailing the car’s utilization and upkeep historical past. Armed with this data, dealerships can carry out the required fixes or upgrades earlier than reselling the automotive. And people can resolve whether or not to belief that car’s efficiency. We at HP realized that, to forestall pointless e-waste, we have to accumulate and make accessible utilization and upkeep knowledge for every laptop computer, like a CarFax for used PCs.
There’s a specific problem to accumulating utilization knowledge for a PC, nevertheless. We want to verify to guard the consumer’s privateness and safety. So, we got down to design a data-collection protocol for PCs that manages to stay safe.
The firmware-level knowledge collector
Fortunately, the sensors that may accumulate the required knowledge are already put in in every PC. There are thermal sensors that monitor CPU temperature, power-consumption screens that observe vitality effectivity, storage well being indicators that assess stable state drive (SSD) put on ranges, efficiency counters that measure system utilization, fan-rotation-speed sensors that detect cooling effectivity, and extra. The bottom line is to gather and retailer all that knowledge in a safe but helpful means.
We determined that the easiest way to do that is to combine the life-cycle data into the firmware layer. By embedding telemetry capabilities instantly throughout the firmware, we be certain that machine well being and utilization knowledge is captured the second it’s collected. This knowledge is saved securely on HP SSD drives, leveraging hardware-based safety measures to guard in opposition to unauthorized entry or manipulation.
The safe telemetry protocol we’ve developed at HP works as follows. We collect the important {hardware} and sensor knowledge and retailer it in a delegated space of the SSD. This space is write-locked, which means solely licensed firmware parts can write to it, stopping unintentional modification or tampering. That licensed firmware element we use is the Endpoint Safety Controller, a devoted piece of {hardware} embedded in business-class HP PCs. It performs a important function in strengthening platform-level safety and works independently from the primary CPU to offer foundational safety.
The safe telemetry protocol collects knowledge from sensors into a chunk of {hardware} referred to as an endpoint safety controller, with built-in safety protections. The endpoint safety controller then writes the information to a devoted read-only portion of the stable state drive, the place licensed working system purposes can entry the information.Mark Montgomery
The endpoint safety controller establishes a safe session by retaining the key key throughout the controller itself. This mechanism permits learn knowledge safety on the SSD—the place telemetry and delicate knowledge are saved—by stopping unauthorized entry, even when the working system is reinstalled or the system surroundings is in any other case altered.
Then, the collected knowledge is recorded in a time-stamped file, saved inside a devoted telemetry go online the SSD. Storing these data on the SSD has the good thing about making certain the information is persistent even when the working system is reinstalled or another drastic change in software program surroundings happens.
The telemetry log employs a cyclic buffer design, routinely overwriting older entries when the log reaches full capability. Then, the telemetry log will be accessed by licensed purposes on the working system stage.
The PCFax
The telemetry log serves as the inspiration for a complete machine historical past report. Very like a CarFax report for used automobiles, this report, which we name PCFax, will present each present customers and potential patrons with essential data.
The PCFax report aggregates knowledge from a number of sources past simply the on-device telemetry logs. It combines the safe firmware-level utilization knowledge with data from HP’s manufacturing facility and supply-chain data, digital-services platforms, customer-support service data, diagnostic logs, and extra. Moreover, the system can combine knowledge from exterior sources together with associate gross sales and repair data, refurbishment associate databases, third-party element producers like Intel, and different unique tools producers. This multisource method creates a whole image of the machine’s whole life cycle, from manufacturing via all subsequent possession and repair occasions.
For IT groups inside organizations, we hope the PCFax will carry simplicity and provides alternatives for optimization. Gaining access to fine-grained utilization and well being data for every machine of their fleet might help IT managers resolve which units are despatched to which customers, in addition to when upkeep is scheduled. This knowledge can even assist machine managers resolve which particular units to switch slightly than issuing new computer systems routinely, enhancing sustainability. And this might help with safety: With real-time monitoring and firmware-level safety, IT groups can mitigate dangers and reply swiftly to rising threats. All of this may facilitate extra environment friendly use of PC assets, chopping down on pointless waste.
A PCFax report, very like a CarFax, will element essential utilization and upkeep data to assist inform potential clients. Hewlett Packard
We additionally hope that, a lot because the CarFax offers folks confidence in shopping for used automobiles, the PCFax can encourage resale of used PCs. For enterprises and customers buying second-life PCs, it supplies detailed visibility into the whole service and help historical past of every system, together with any repairs, upgrades, or efficiency points encountered throughout its preliminary deployment. By making this complete machine historical past available, PCFax permits extra PCs to seek out productive second lives slightly than being prematurely discarded, instantly addressing the e-waste problem whereas offering financial advantages to each sellers and patrons within the secondary PC market.
Whereas HP’s options signify a major step ahead, challenges stay. Standardizing telemetry frameworks throughout various ecosystems is important for broader adoption. Moreover, educating organizations about the advantages of life-cycle data might be important to driving uptake.
We’re additionally engaged on integrating AI into our dashboards. We hope to make use of AI fashions to research historic telemetry knowledge and predict failures earlier than they occur, resembling detecting rising SSD write cycles to forecast impending failure and alert IT groups for proactive substitute, or predicting battery degradation and routinely producing a service ticket to make sure a substitute battery is prepared earlier than failure, minimizing downtime.
We plan to begin rolling out these options initially of 2026.
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