NVIDIA's Smaller, Cheaper Jetson TX2 NX Packs a Lot of Power Into a SODIMM-Format SOM for Edge AI
At $199, the Jetson TX2 NX is considerably cheaper than the TX2 4GB while offering the same performance — at the cost of a few ports.
NVIDIA has announced another entry in its Jetson family of AI-centric embedded computers, designed to squeeze the Jetson TX2 into smaller form factors at a considerable discount: the Jetson TX2 NX.
Launched in March 2017, the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 is a compact embedded system-on-module that brings the company's Denver 2 Arm cores and Pascal GPU cores to bear on edge AI tasks. It's not the only device in the Jetson family either, with the current line-up spanning everything from the entry-level Jetson Nano 2GB to the top-end Jetson AGX Xavier.
The Jetson TX2 NX, as the name suggests, is effectively the four-year-old Jetson TX2 but in a new form factor: The 400-pin high-density connector of the Jetson TX2 module has gone, replaced by a module which takes the popular SODIMM form factor with 260-pin edge connector. As a result, the new model is smaller: 69.6x45mm, compared to 87x50mm for the original (around 2.74x1.78" and 3.43x1.97" respectively).
There is a cost in the move to a lower-density connector and smaller form factor, however: The TX2 NX drops from one x1 and one x4 PCI Express Gen. 2 lanes, the latter splittable to two x1s and an x2, to one x1 and one x2 which cannot be split. There are still 12 lanes of MIPI CSI-2, but the upper limit for cameras is reduced from six to five — though 12 are still supported via virtual channels.
Display outputs have changed, too: While the two multi-mode DisplayPort 1.2, embedded DisplayPort 1.4, and HDMI 2.0 ports are intact, the two x4 DSI lanes have been dropped to a single x2.
Elsewhere, though, the specifications remain untouched: The new module includes the same processors as its predecessor, offering 1.33 TFLOPS of computer using a dual-core Denver 2 CPU with four additional Arm Cortex-A57 MPCore cores, a 256-core Pascal GPU, and 4GB of LPDDR4 running at 51.2GB/s - a capacity equalled by the Jetson TX2 4GB, launched as a cost-reduced variant of the original TX2 with 8GB. There's 16GB of eMMC 5.1 storage on board, gigabit Ethernet, and two power targets: 7.5W lower-performance and 15W max-performance.
More information on the Jetson TX2 NX can be found on the NVIDIA website, where it can be purchased from the channel at $199 — a considerable discount over the $299 Jetson TX2 4GB, and less than half the price of the original $479 Jetson TX2 8GB.
