HP launches G10 Edition ZBook mobile workstations

HP has launched new G10 Editions of its ZBook mobile workstations, the HP ZBook Firefly, HP ZBook Power, HP ZBook Studio, and HP ZBook Fury.

Of the new machines, the Firefly G10 and Power G10 stand out because they are the first in the ZBook portfolio to offer AMD Ryzen and Ryzen Pro processors for mobile. Both laptops can also be configured with Intel vPro powered by 13th Gen Intel Core processors and Nvidia RTX Ada Generation laptop GPUs. The models with AMD processors can be recognised by an 'A' suffix.

The HP ZBook Power G10 is a 15.6-inch laptop with up to 64 GB of memory. With an AMD processor, the Power G10 A can include integrated AMD Radeon graphics or up to Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada laptop GPU (8 GB). With an Intel Core processor, the

Power G10 can include integrated graphics or up to Nvidia RTX 3000 Ada laptop GPU (8 GB).

Other features include an all-aluminium chassis, a 2K QHD (2,560 x 1,440 resolution) 120Hz display, an auto-framing 5 MP camera, which frames the user on video calls even if they move around a little, and AI Noise Suppression, to block background noise.

The HP ZBook Studio G10 is a thin and light 16-inch mobile workstation which starts at 18mm and 1.73kg. It has higher spec graphics than the Power G10, up to the Nvidia RTX 4000 Ada Laptop GPU (12 GB) or Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 (12 GB). It comes with 64 GB of DDR5 memory, and an optional HP DreamColor Display with 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut and a 120Hz refresh rate. highest performing mobile workstation with up to an Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada www.hp.com/zworkstations

13900HX. It can be configured with up to 128 GB of memory, and up to 12 TB of storage spread across three 4 TB NVMe SSDs.

The laptop comes with a choice of 15.6-inch or 16-inch displays. It starts at 2.4kg and is 27.7mm thick.

More and more companies are prioritising sustainability because the twin pressures of governments and customers are forcing them to do just that – finally! The world can’t afford to wait any longer.

From boot-strapped start-ups to large enterprises, we’re seeing significant investments being poured into creating more sustainable products and reducing energy consumption and waste in manufacturing.

It’s good for business and it’s commonsense survival instincts. In a 2022 study of 850 companies worldwide, conducted by strategy firm Boston Consulting Group, 80% said they plan to increase their investments in sustainability.

The European Net-Zero Industry Act and the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) both provide public funds specifically for manufacturers to reduce carbon emissions.

The IRA provides nearly $6 billion to industrial and manufacturing facilities engaged in energy-intensive industrial processes. It can help fund installation and implementation of new technologies or even early-stage engineering studies to prepare a facility to lower its emissions.

Public funding is moving sustainability away from being considered a costly requirement and toward becoming a legitimate growth opportunity.

DIGITALISATION’S ROLE

Research shows that, in some parts of the world, digitalisation of manufacturing has greater potential to reduce CO2 emissions than in it does in other energy-intensive sectors such as agriculture, construction and mobility.

Technology for sustainable design and manufacturing is nothing new. Over the years, product design software companies have rolled out software that recommends more ecological materials or suggests other methods of decreasing a product’s environmental impact.

Developing that technology has been crucial, of course. But unfortunately, previous generations of this tech have been cumbersome to use, functioning outside of a product designer’s natural workflow, and required data or expertise not in a designer’s scope. As a result, the tools have not been widely adopted.

I’ve spent years working side by side with product designers and engineers, in various countries, to understand their design-andmake processes, their passion for creating products that positively impact peoples’ lives and disgust at seeing them in landfills, and the challenges involved in designing for sustainability. I’ve identified three common historical barriers.

Sustainability comes last. The sustainability challenge has often been outsourced to a lifecycle analysis expert, costing time and money that designers rarely have. Sustainability analysis has been done at the end of the product design process, if at all, after critical decisions have been made and a product’s impact is locked in.

Sustainability loses to other priorities, too. Designers frequently juggle too many contradictory priorities during product development. And sustainability has been a lower-priority criteria than cost.

Sustainability analysis requires big data. Calculating the total carbon footprint of a product typically requires a lot of data on use, transportation, end-of-life and more –data not typically accessible to and known by a designer.

Given how a designer’s decisions cascade through a product’s life, their impact on a product’s carbon footprint is critical and outsized. In fact, it’s estimated that over 80% of product-related environmental impacts are determined during the design phase.

Fully aware of this issue, at Autodesk, we are working hard to address the challenges that all our customers, and particularly the product designers among them, encounter when trying to use technology to reduce impact.

A New Generation

The next generation of sustainability tools needs to address the common barriers I’ve identified. Autodesk’s tools integrate sustainability insights directly into designers’ existing tools and workflows. A concept’s real-time sustainability score is available, like a fuel gauge on the dashboard, throughout the development process, giving designers the power to make informed sustainability choices at the earliest stages of their work.

In these new tools, carbon insights are provided, along with criteria such as materials costs, supply chain risks and compliance measures. These tools give designers the information they need to make better decisions, more quickly.

An example of this new approach is the Makersite add-on for Autodesk Fusion 360, which enables a designer to instantly get CO2 and materials cost assessments, calculated side by side for smart tradeoffs, without leaving their CAD/design environment. Lower-carbon materials are recommended to the designer, and no data entry is required in order to get a sustainability measure and actionable recommendations.

To reduce environmental impact on a large scale, we need many more accessible sustainability tools of the kind that I’ve described. With advanced technologies like cloud-powered artificial intelligence and machine learning, generative design, additive manufacturing and open access to platforms and data now in our toolboxes, we have a constellation of new capabilities to take on our global responsibilities, to overcome what has previously stymied us and help address the climate crisis.

It’s this generation’s mandate to effect change and to leverage technology to succeed in that challenge.

Ilike to romantically compare witnessing your first rocket launch to getting your first kiss. The warm glow on your skin; your toes curling into the ground as you feel the shake. The entire time your head is tilted back, eyes squinted closed but not quite all the way. Then there’s pause that comes with the will-they/won’t-they anticipation. Then, as sudden as the moment began, it’s all over.

Space launches are incredibly complicated: compared to traditional cargo aircraft, rockets require significantly more specialised ground infrastructure.

It takes a full 24 hours in advance of the expected launch window to move the rocket from storage to the launch site, to get it hooked up to the booster, and loaded with crew members, fuel and supplies.

Not included in this calculation are the gruelling years of testing, manufacturing and assembly that take place beforehand.

Yet, when launch day finally comes, so many things can go awry. Inclement weather, some asshole sailing his boat too close to the launch site, abnormal sensor readings, fuel not reaching the appropriate temperature, vertical wind shear.

Hell – even the clouds being too thick can completely cancel your date with space. With so much potential for things to go wrong, you start to wonder how any of the commercial space companies have ever been kissed?

Launch Sustainability

With the scrubbed launch this Spring of the 3D-printed rocket from Relativity, I began to pay a lot more attention to the sustainability of these launches – and not just the rockets themselves, but more so the supply chain and logistics involved.

A reusable rocket sounds great in theory, but a launch itself still has a horrible environmental impact.

For starters, I don’t think that there are enough carbon offset credits to combat the 50 to 100 times increase in emissions generated from a single launch as compared to the average airplane ride.

In 2022, SpaceX launched 180 rockets. That’s 30,600 to 61,200 trees for those of you still following. To summarise: one airplane = 34 trees. One SpaceX launch = well over 30,000 trees.

Additionally, if the excessive carbon being dumped into the atmosphere isn’t enough to give you pause for thought, then there’s also this to bear in mind: atmospheric models from University College London have revealed that the soot particles left by these rockets retain up to 500 times more heat in our atmosphere than all other sources of soot combined.

To The Moon And Back

The hunger to experience the thrill of a launch first-hand is driving a hectic commercial space industry. In 2021, for example, we all watched the race to space among top-table billionaires, as Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin battled it out.

For many of us living in a world ravaged by a life-threatening pandemic, emotions ranged from wonderment and awe to disbelief and even anger.

Most of us will never have the luxury of leaving this blue marble behind when it literally gets too hot to stick around.

So what will it take to get this new space industry to pay attention to its environmental impact? A specialised tech-bro tax credit incentive? An updated green-er deal? Reusable rockets that are somehow cheaper than the current estimated low, low price of $67 million?

There’s a lot that new space can learn from the commercial airline industry when it comes to tackling the challenge that is sustainability.

Tactics might include swapping to more sustainable fuels; creating new engines that reduce emissions, noise and fuel burn; and funding grant programmes to analyse, review and track emissions, energy efficiencies, operational efficiency, and climate impact (to name a few).

Intentional Choices

I understand how incredibly challenging it can be to bake sustainability into a product that has been almost a decade in the making.

But in the emerging area of rocket logistics, the industry could be more sustainable and reduce environmental impact for every launch by making stronger, intentional investments in areas like equipment procurement, basing, international diplomacy and more efficiently trained and skilled personnel. Becoming more efficient at handling takeoff and landing – where most rockets burn the greatest amount of fuel – can only help us in the long run.

Sustainability isn’t an easy ask for any country, industry or large rocket manufacturer. But all I’m asking is for some of them to try.

I know that it won’t be easy and that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I leave you with my mother’s sage advice: Sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs before you get to the charming part.