HP and TI

For more than 80 years, HP has developed technology around how people work, create and connect. “Audio is one of the most prominent ways people experience the PC today,” said Ann Villegas, vice president of commercial architecture and technology solutions at HP. “Everyone is depending on their audio being clear and powerful.”

At the same time, people want a consistent and immersive audio experience no matter where they are.

“Whether you’re introducing your newborn to their grandparents who live hours away on a video call, joining a virtual meeting from a coffee shop, or catching up on your favorite show at home, audio is at the center of it all. Making sure that we handle all of these different use cases seamlessly without compromising battery life or device weight is the holy grail that customers are looking for in a laptop,” said Vikas SV, vice president and general manager of audio at TI.

Delivering clear audio in a modern laptop is challenging. HP designs their laptops’ audio at a system level, and so they must balance several considerations at once: immersive audio; long battery life; and a thin, light machine that can be taken anywhere.

Louder audio demands larger speaker enclosures, a significant constraint in a chassis designed to be thin and light. Pushing more power through the system can also introduce rattling in the keyboard and chassis, forcing engineers to carefully balance loudness with comfort and reliability. Greater clarity requires eliminating distortion, particularly at higher volumes, so voices remain natural and music sounds clear. And every improvement carries a cost in power consumption, shortening the battery life customers depend on.

"It's not just about the component," said Richard Chang, manager of commercial and consumer audio engineering at HP. "We must think about system-level performance."

The amplifier sits at the center of these competing demands, shaping how power is translated into volume, clarity and efficiency across the entire design. Addressing the challenges requires a chip that can optimize performance, power efficiency, platform reliability and acoustic tuning together and an upfront collaboration from a system architecture level.

HP worked with TI on every stage of design to enable seamless operation across the entire system, from speaker modeling, external components optimization, and PCB layout to testing the final laptop and perfecting it in an acoustics lab. As part of that collaboration, HP used TI's TAS2783 amplifier to reduce power consumption, giving its engineers more flexibility to fine-tune the overall audio system.

“TI brings legendary expertise on the power side,” Villegas said. “That really lent itself into the amplifier design. It made it easier for us to focus primarily on delivering a great audio experience.”

The result was louder sound without rattling, clearer sound without distortion and more powerful audio without compromising battery life.

“With the TAS2783, we’ve combined decades of innovation that have gone into audio development at TI into a small form factor that fits into HP’s laptops,” Vikas said. “This device is capable of delivering over extremely high peak power to a speaker, while still enabling the laptop to have an incredible battery life.” That same amount of wattage can comfortably handle the sound from your living room’s television.

For HP’s customers, the impact is immediate and tangible. Voices sound clearer on a telehealth appointment where a doctor listens to a patient’s symptoms; an aspiring musician can scrutinize and celebrate the recording of their first song at high volume; and, the dialogue and score of the finale of someone’s favorite show is especially immersive, making the viewing experience even more satisfying. It doesn’t matter if someone is at an airport, coffee shop or in meetings at the office; everyone will be able to have a full and clear audio experience.

The collaboration between HP and TI also contributes to HP’s broader audio roadmap as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes how people interact with their devices.

“Voice is becoming one of the most natural and distinct ways people engage with technology,” said Villegas. In meetings, through AI assistants and across the everyday flow of work, voice is almost becoming as unique as a fingerprint. Delivering that future requires the same approach that made the EliteBook X G2i and OmniBook Ultra possible.

“The amplifier solution we built this year is a stepping stone,” Villegas said. “I really look forward to creating the end-to-end audio experience through our collaboration in the coming years.”