Dev Kit Weekly: NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit

June 16, 2022

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[EDITOR'S NOTE: CLICK HERE TO JUMP TO RAFFLE ENTRY FORM]

Now, this hefty box might look familiar. That’s because it’s the same form factor and a similar enclosure as seen in NVIDIA’s Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit that we reviewed a while back here on Dev Kit Weekly.

But it’s not quite the same. The Jetson AGX Orin is yet another supercomputer-class kit from NVIDIA that delivers 275 TOPS of performance, 8x more than its predecessor, the Jetson AGX Xavier module.

That level of processing capability is possible because of the NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture, which includes 2,048 NVIDIA CUDA cores, alongside 64 Tensor cores, two NVIDIA Deep Learning Accelerators, and PVA 2.0 vision accelerator. If you hadn’t guessed from that, the AGX Orin is a vision and AI workload crunching monster designed to demolish tasks ranging from video streaming to advanced autonomous robotics.

And that’s before we even count the 12-core Arm Cortex-A78 and video encode and decode blocks capable of processing up to 4K60 and 8K30 resolutions, respectively.

Of course, data doesn’t flow straight into the GPU, but it might as well thanks to 32 GB of next-generation 256-bit LPDDR5 memory that supports data transfers of 204.8 GBps. This is augmented by an additional 64 GB of eMMC 5.1 storage with read speeds that top out at 250 MBps. For good measure, there’s also this microSD slot here that supports UHS-1 cards up to SDR104 mode.

Now, what’s ploughing through all that image-centric data if you don’t have a way to look at it if you want to? On the display front, the Jetson AGX Orin features an 8K60 multi-mode DisplayPort 1.4a interface and HDMI 2.1 port. Either of two USB C ports can also be used as DisplayPort interfaces or data connectivity. Those are joined by 4x USB 2.0 ports and 1x USB Micro-B port.

In the broader networking sense, a x16 PCIe slot that’s hidden under this little trap door has half its lanes allocated to PCIe Gen 4 – that’s eight for those counting. And if you need an enterprise-class connection, 4x 10 GbE ports will serve you well.

Now, we’ve already gone through a lot, but despite that feature flex, the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin still has a configurable TDP of just 15 to 60 W.

If you thought the hardware shined, just sit back while we jump into the software. This Jetson AGX Orin kit is powered by NVIDIA’s JetPack 5.0 SDK, a software kit optimized for end-to-end AI pipeline acceleration. This updated version of JetPack software includes a Linux for Tegra (L4T) board support package based on version 5.1 of the Linux kernel and a reference file system from Ubuntu 20.04.

You’ll want to be sure to head on over to developer.nvidia.com/embedded/community to check out a bunch of cool tools and demos that you can use to evaluate the AGX Orin and get started. And, if you’re satisfied with your results, which I’m not sure why you wouldn’t be, be sure to check out Jetson AGX Orin modules, which will be available in different form factor, memory, and performance levels starting next month and at various points through the rest of the year.

You can expect to pay anywhere between $399 and $1599 for those modules in quantities of 1, or $1999 if you want a kit like this. Of course, the world is playing a psych on you, because they’re on backorder pretty much everywhere, so you’ll probably pay double that on the secondary market.

But luckily, your friends here at Embedded Computing Design still have one shot for you to get your hands on one, and the best part is that it’ll cost you zero, zilch, niet, nada, nothing. You can get one for absolutely free if you win this week’s raffle. All it takes to enter is filling out the form below.

Well, that about wraps up this edition of Dev Kit Weekly, but I have to say that I’m impressed. If you have been with us for a while, you’ll remember that the first ever Dev Kit Weekly featured an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier development kit, and the company just keeps pushing the envelope with way more performance at a similar price point and power consumption.

And that’s a win for industry as we keep trying to push the AI envelope. Best of luck in the raffle, and we’ll see you next time on Dev Kit Weekly.