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 instances as quick as e-waste recycling. A lot of this waste comes from prematurely discarded digital units.
Many enterprises comply with a regular three-year substitute cycle, assuming older computer systems are inefficient. Nonetheless, many of those units are nonetheless useful and will carry out properly with minor upgrades or upkeep. The difficulty is, nobody is aware of what the weak factors are for a selected machine, or what the wanted upkeep is, and the diagnostics can be too pricey and time-consuming. It’s simpler to simply purchase model new laptops.
When shopping for a used automobile, dealerships and particular person consumers can entry every automobile’s specific CarFax report, detailing the car’s utilization and upkeep historical past. Armed with this info, dealerships can carry out the required fixes or upgrades earlier than reselling the automobile. And people can determine whether or not to belief that car’s efficiency. We at HP realized that, to stop pointless e-waste, we have to acquire and make accessible utilization and upkeep knowledge for every laptop computer, like a CarFax for used PCs.
There’s a specific problem to amassing utilization knowledge for a PC, nonetheless. We’d like to ensure to guard the person’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 acquire the required knowledge are already put in in every PC. There are thermal sensors that monitor CPU temperature, power-consumption displays that monitor energy efficiency, storage well being indicators that assess solid state drive (SSD) put on ranges, efficiency counters that measure system utilization, fan-rotation-speed sensors that detect cooling effectivity, and extra. The hot button is to gather and retailer all that knowledge in a safe but helpful approach.
We determined that the easiest way to do that is to combine the life-cycle information into the firmware layer. By embedding telemetry capabilities immediately inside the firmware, we make sure 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 towards unauthorized entry or manipulation.
The safe telemetry protocol we’ve developed at HP works as follows. We collect the vital {hardware} and sensor knowledge and retailer it in a delegated space of the SSD. This space is write-locked, that means solely licensed firmware elements can write to it, stopping unintended modification or tampering. That licensed firmware part we use is the Endpoint Safety Controller, a devoted piece of {hardware} embedded in business-class HP PCs. It performs a vital function in strengthening platform-level safety and works independently from the principle CPU to supply foundational safety.
The safe telemetry protocol collects knowledge from sensors into a chunk of {hardware} often called 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 operating system purposes can entry the information.Mark Montgomery
The endpoint safety controller establishes a safe session by retaining the key key inside 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 browsing the SSD. Storing these information on the SSD has the good thing about guaranteeing 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 muse for a complete machine historical past report. Very similar to a CarFax report for used automobiles, this report, which we name PCFax, will present each present customers and potential consumers with essential info.
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 info from HP’s manufacturing facility and supply-chain information, digital-services platforms, customer-support service information, diagnostic logs, and extra. Moreover, the system can combine knowledge from exterior sources together with associate gross sales and repair information, refurbishment associate databases, third-party part producers like Intel, and different unique gear producers. This multisource method creates a whole image of the machine’s whole life cycle, from manufacturing by all subsequent possession and repair occasions.
For IT groups inside organizations, we hope the PCFax will convey simplicity and provides alternatives for optimization. Accessing fine-grained utilization and well being info for every machine of their fleet may help IT managers determine which units are despatched to which customers, in addition to when upkeep is scheduled. This knowledge may also assist machine managers determine which particular units to exchange somewhat than issuing new computer systems routinely, enhancing sustainability. And this may 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 sources, slicing down on pointless waste.
A PCFax report, very like a CarFax, will element essential utilization and upkeep info to assist inform potential clients. Hewlett Packard
We additionally hope that, a lot because the CarFax provides individuals confidence in shopping for used automobiles, the PCFax can encourage resale of used PCs. For enterprises and shoppers buying second-life PCs, it gives 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 somewhat than being prematurely discarded, immediately addressing the e-waste problem whereas offering financial advantages to each sellers and consumers within the secondary PC market.
Whereas HP’s options signify a major step ahead, challenges stay. Standardizing telemetry frameworks throughout various ecosystems is vital for broader adoption. Moreover, educating organizations about the advantages of life-cycle information will likely be important to driving uptake.
We’re additionally engaged on integrating AI into our dashboards. We hope to make use of AI models to investigate historic telemetry knowledge and predict failures earlier than they occur, comparable to 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 start out rolling out these options at the start of 2026.
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