HP Dc7700 Testing on HP Business Desktop PCs - Page 3

Test Tool Development An essential element of the HP test process is our attention and dedication to continuously improving the tests and processes used during product development. Two such areas of concentration are Hardware Evaluation Test Development and Software Image Development. Hardware Evaluation Test Development designs tests to help ensure that hardware components conform to published functional engineering design specifications. Software Image Development architects image databases, processes, and tools used to test and deliver software images on business desktop products. Hardware Evaluation Test Development The Evaluation Test Development (ETD) team designs and provides hardware and software test tools necessary to help ensure that the hardware components of HP products conform to published functional engineering design specifications. This engineering organization, established in 1988, is shared by most of HP. The ETD tools are used throughout all R&D organizations within the Personal Systems Group (PSG) and most R&D organizations within the Enterprise Systems Group (ESG), in manufacturing sites, and by HP field engineers. The ETD tests enable product development teams to better evaluate new designs and resolve most design issues, and they help improve manufacturing volume production. • Hardware and Software design evaluation tools-ETD tests emulate most states of a targeted subsystem, they are low cost and easy to setup, and they enable product teams to test a large number of units, which helps to identify yield failures. These tools provide detailed error messages that aid in debugging, and they provide reproducible test cases. • ETD HW and SW tests are executed on all business desktop products and are used on the following product sub-systems: - Microprocessors and chipsets, including cache memory, interrupts, and timers - System memory - PCI/PCI-X/AGP/PCI Express Graphics subsystems - Hard Drive and Removable Storage interfaces - Network Interface Cards and modems - Parallel, Serial, and USB 1.0/2.0 ports, Bluetooth, and Firewire - Power Management - Cardbus/PCMCIA Software Image Development Software Image Development is optimized for time-to-market delivery, quality, and release integrity. A dedicated tool development team was formed in 1998. Their charter was to design software image databases, processes, and tools that encompass the following elements: • Test Management-Database tools enable test teams to generate and manage test plans and test procedures in a centralized, repeatable environment with assurances that the test configurations conform to product definition and requirements. - Comprehensive test procedures within test plans contain pass/fail criteria that can be leveraged by any workgroup. Rigorous database rules help verify that each test procedure criteria is executed only when certain conditions are met. - Test configurations are tracked at the hardware revision level of each device, including firmware (FW)/BIOS revisions, and at the software versions level for each component used during software image download and test. 3