Seeed Studio Launches Compact, High-Performance NVIDIA Jetson-Based Mini AI Computer T506S, T906
Designed for edge AI in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), these compact computers pack a serious punch for machine learning work.
Seeed Studio has announced the launch of two mini computers, designed for edge AI and deep learning work — and both based around different models of NVIDIA Jetson system-on-module (SOM): the Mini AI Computer T506S and the T906.
The two new Mini AI Computer models from Seeed Studio share several commonalities, beyond being compact computers designed to run artificial intelligence workloads at the edge: they both include numerous ports for external peripherals, a metal chassis which doubles as a heatsink, and run NVIDIA's Jetpack platform on the software side. Precise specifications, however, vary considerably — and not solely due to the two using very different models of Jetson SOM internally.
The Mini AI Computer T506S is built around the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module, offering 8GB of LPDDR4 memory, six 64-bit Arm cores and a 384-core NVIDIA Volta graphics processor, and a claimed overall performance of 21 trillion operations per second (TOPS) at INT8 precision. To this, Seeed has added a carrier board which offers an impressive five gigabit Ethernet network ports — with four supporting PSE Power over Ethernet (PoE) and the fifth PD PoE.
Elsewhere on the board is an M.2 M-key slot for NVMe storage, pre-fitted with a 128GB SSD, and a microSD slot, an HDMI video output, a mini PCI Express slot and M.2 E-key slot for optional cellular modems or GPS modules, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a micro-USB port for device mode operation, and "industrial interfaces" including a CAN 2.0b bus, I2C, RS232, RS485, and four general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins.
For those who need more computing power, the Mini AI Computer T906 uses the newer Jetson AGX Orin module with 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, an eight-core Arm CPU plus 1,792-core Ampere GPU with 56 Tensor processing cores, and a claimed overall compute performance of 200 TOPS for sparse INT8 workloads.
Elsewhere on the board are an HDMI port, two Ethernet ports, one 10-gig-Ethernet and one gigabit Ethernet, a 64GB eMMC plus M.2 M-key slot for additional storage, M.2 B-key and E-key slots plus a mini-PCI Express slot for optional Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and GPS connectivity, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, two USB 2.0 Type-C ports for device mode and debugging respectively, and industrial interfaces including three CAN buses, two RS232 ports, a third RS232 port for time synchronization, and two GPIO pins.
The T906 also includes two GMSL 2 camera connectors, backwards compatible with GMLS1, and comes with two built-in fans to keep the system running cool — in contrast with the T506S, which supports optional cooling fans but is designed for passive operation. Under load, Seeed Studio says the T906 draws around 45W typical power with a 75W peak — hence the inclusion of the two fans.
Both models are now available on the Seeed Studio web store, priced at $1,599 for the T506S and $2,599 for the T906 respectively — before volume discounts, available on ten units or more.