Nvidia Jetson is a series of embedded computing boards from Nvidia. The Jetson TK1, TX1 and TX2 models all carry a Tegra processor (or SoC) from Nvidia that integrates an ARM architecturecentral processing unit (CPU). Jetson is a low-power system and is designed for accelerating machine learning applications.
Hardware
Nvidia Jetson TK1
The Jetson family includes the following boards:
In late April 2014, Nvidia shipped the Nvidia Jetson TK1 development board containing a Tegra K1 SoC in the T124 variant and running Ubuntu Linux.[1]
The Nvidia Jetson TX1 development board bears a Tegra X1 of model T210.[2]
The Nvidia Jetson TX2 board bears a Tegra X2 of microarchitecture GP10B[3] (SoC type T186 or very similar). This board and the associated development platform was announced in March 2017 as a compact card design for low power scenarios, e.g. for the use in smaller camera drones such as the Skydio 2[4]. A matrix describing a set of performance modes was provided by the media along with that.[5] Further a TX2i variant, said to be rugged and suitable for industrial use cases, is mentioned.[6]
The Nvidia Jetson Xavier was announced as a development kit in end of August 2018. Indications were given that a 20x acceleration for certain application cases compared to predecessor devices should be expected, and that the application power efficiency is 10x improved. Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX has a 6-core Nvidia Carmel ARMv8.2.
The Nvidia Jetson AGXXavier is the 8-core version on the same core architecture (Carmel Armv8.2).[7]
An Nvidia Jetson Nano developer kit
The Nvidia Jetson Nano was announced as a development system in mid-March 2019[8] The intended market is for hobbyist robotics due to the low price point.[9][10] The final specs expose the board being sort of a power-optimized, stripped-down version of what a full Tegra X1 system would mean. Only half of the CPU (only 4x A57 @ 1.43 GHz) and GPU (128 cores of Maxwell generation @ 921 MHz) cores are present and only half of the maximum possible RAM is attached (4 GB LPDDR4 @ 64 bit + 1.6 GHz = 25.6 GB/s) whilst the available or usable interfacing is determined by the baseboard design and is further subject of implementation decisions and specifics in an end user specific design for an application case.[11]
In September 2022 Nvidia announced the Jetson Orin Nano.[14][15] The modules have the same 260-pin SO-DIMM connector and 69.6 mm x 45 mm dimensions, and come in two variants. The 4 GB variant provides 20 Sparse or 10 Dense TOPs, using a 512-core Ampere GPU with 16 Tensor cores, while the 8 GB variant doubles those numbers to 40/20 TOPs, a 1024-core GPU and 16 Tensor cores. Both have 6 Arm Cortex-A78AE cores. The 4 GB module starts at $199 and the 8 GB variant for $299, when purchasing 1000 units.
In December 2024, Nvidia announced the updated Orin Nano with a claimed 1.7x performance improvement and a price reduction of the development kit from $499 to $249 [16]
Performance
The published performance modes of the Nvidia Jetson TX2 are as follows.
from 512-core Nvidia Ampere architecture GPU with 16 Tensor cores
6-core ARM Cortex-A78AE v8.2 64-bit CPU 1.5MB L2 + 4MB L3
4–8 GiB
7–10 W
2023
Jetson Orin NX
70–100 TOPS
1024-core Nvidia Ampere architecture GPU with 32 Tensor cores
up to 8-core ARM Cortex-A78AE v8.2 64-bit CPU 2MB L2 + 4MB L3
8–16 GiB
10–25 W
2023
Jetson AGX Orin
200-275 TOPS
up to 2048-core Nvidia Ampere architecture GPU with 64 Tensor cores
up to 12-core ARM Cortex-A78AE v8.2 64-bit CPU 3MB L2 + 6MB L3
32–64 GiB
15–60 W
Software
Various operating systems and software might be able to run on the Jetson board series.
Linux
JetPack is a software development kit (SDK) from Nvidia for their Jetson board series. It includes the Linux for Tegra (L4T) operating system and other tools. The official Nvidia download page bears an entry for JetPack 3.2 (uploaded there on 2018-03-08) that states:
JetPack 3.2 adds support for the Linux for Tegra r28.2 image for the Jetson OS. It is packaged with newer versions of Tegra System Profiler, TensorRT, and cuDNN from the last release.[21]
RedHawk Linux is a high-performance RTOS available for the Jetson platform, along with associated NightStar real-time development tools, CUDA/GPU enhancements, and a framework for hardware-in-the-loop and man-in-the-loop simulations.[22]
QNX
The QNX operating system also available for the Jetson platform, though it is not widely announced. There are success reports of installing and running specific QNX packages on certain Nvidia Jetson board variants. Namely the package qnx-V3Q-23.16.01 that is seemingly in parts based on Nvidia's Vibrante Linux distribution is reported to run on the Jetson TK1 Pro board.[23]
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