
Nvidia's Jetson TX1 ARM development board - willow9886
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-tegra-jtx1&num=1#IOT
======
leoc
Another 64-bit ARM board out there: the Gigabyte MP30-AR0
[http://b2b.gigabyte.com/products/product-
page.aspx?pid=5422#...](http://b2b.gigabyte.com/products/product-
page.aspx?pid=5422#ov) [http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/03/27/gigabyte-
mp30-ar0-is-...](http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/03/27/gigabyte-mp30-ar0-is-
an-arm-server-motherboard-powered-by-applied-micro-x-gene-1-soc/) .
Unfortunately this one has limited distribution and $ask pricing.

~~~
voltagex_
That really frustrates me. I'm running a Dreamplug [1] as one of the main
boxes on my network. The second USB port has died and it's really starting to
show its age.

The Gigabyte board would give me enough SATA ports and grunt to run a decent
NAS - I think it'd give the C2750 from Intel a run for its money, power wise.

Your linked article has a comment suggesting the Gigabyte board retails for
987 Euros. Jeebus.

[1]:
[https://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.a...](https://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx)
($50+ JTAG boards... yay! /s)

~~~
wyldfire
The dreamplug is probably closer to the pogoplug in feature set (and
definitely cost!).

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GM1Q1O/?&tag=bcgpfeed-2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GM1Q1O/?&tag=bcgpfeed-20)

It's dirt cheap ($10-20), easy to load linux on [1], and it can be a simple
file server, it can run minidlna, google cloud print [2], all kinds of stuff.
800MHz is not a screamer, but most simple I/O tasks like A/V streaming and
printing are a walk in the park.

[1] [http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-
series-4](http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-series-4)

[2] [http://geekvisit.com/hacking-pogoplug-mobile-adding-
airprint...](http://geekvisit.com/hacking-pogoplug-mobile-adding-airprint-
cloudprint-print-chromebook-cloudprint-printer/)

~~~
voltagex_
Funny you should mention that. I've got one on the bench from a failed u-boot
upgrade (worked after first reboot, then never again). I have the right tools
to fix it, I'm just wondering whether it's worth the time or effort. They're
$40-50AUD here as they're not sold locally (?)

------
fpp
The price is quite a disappointment particularly when comparing to the Shield
pricing (and how long NVidia has taken to present the kit - the X1 was
introduced now almost a year ago / Shield on the market since early this
year).

Let's see in the next days how performance of the board stacks up once the
embargo on publishing test results is over.

Remember that the 1TFlops published is FP16 not FP32.

~~~
PeCaN
I think with the dev kit you're mostly paying for the motherboard-type thing
and all the software.

The module itself doesn't seem that expensive, given that you're getting a
top-notch ARM SoC. Personally I'd be interested in a group buy when it gets
released (early next year, for $299 in 1k quantities).

The only Cortex-A72 chip that I know of is the MediaTek MT8173, and the GPU on
that is nowhere close to a Tegra X1. So it's not like this is a previous-
generation chip, despite being close to a year old.

------
unwind
Very impressive, but it feels expensive to me. I'm cheap though.

The linked article was pretty light on the detail, and weirdly written. It
never states how many cores the CPU has; I had to check Nvidia's page
([http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tx1-dev-
kit.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tx1-dev-kit.html)) to find out:
it's a quad-core so four cores.

Some pretty nice low-level embedded-style I/O on there too (GPIOs, I2C, I2S,
SPI, TTL UART).

~~~
rwmj
According to Wikipedia it's 8 cores (big.LITTLE, so depending on the kernel
and microarchitecture they might not all be usable at the same time):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegra#Tegra_X1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegra#Tegra_X1)

~~~
unwind
Right ... that's weird, why isn't Nvidia's own Jetson-page more clear on this?
Confusing.

~~~
rockdoe
~~You only get 4 usable at any given time. Either the big core runs (A57) or
the LITTLE core (A53) runs.~~

Sounds like I'm mistaken.

~~~
Narishma
Is this specific to Nvidia chips? Because that's not how it works on
big.LITTLE SoCs from other manufacturers. In those you can use all cores at
the same time if you want to.

~~~
rwmj
Samsung 5410 worked like that, but apparently that was a bug in that SoC
(fixed in the 5420 so you can use all 8 cores).

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advancedprivacy
I hoped that it might be affordable like the TK1 dev board. But the card sized
one is 300$/1k and the dev board 600$... 300$ for students.
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/9779/nvidia-announces-
jetson-t...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9779/nvidia-announces-jetson-
tx1-tegra-x1-module-development-kit)

~~~
pjc50
It's astonishingly beefy, with games-console (or more) levels of computing
power. Very few people need that on an embedded board.

~~~
bjackman
This isn't an "embedded board".. It's got a GPU, it's got PCIe, it's 64-bit
with 4 cores.

~~~
pjc50
Yes it is: embedded is a use category, not a performance specification. It's
certainly not a "desktop" or "consumer" product as it doesn't even have a
case. It's designed to be _embedded_ within another product or system.

------
kampsy
This is exactly what I need for my deep learning research. Iv been abusing my
raspberry pi 2 with heavy neuro nets. Shame about the prise though. I will
wait for the price to drop(hopefully).

~~~
kctess5
Heavy neural nets on a rasp-pi? How does that work out?

~~~
mtw
[https://www.bitpi.co/2015/03/31/basic-deep-learning-
raspberr...](https://www.bitpi.co/2015/03/31/basic-deep-learning-raspberry-
pi/)

------
andreiw
Dunno, depending on what you're doing the Shield TV costs less and does about
the same. People are running Ubuntu on these today, and you get the video,
XHCI USB, GigE ethernet and WiFi working fine. Of course having a more
"normal" platform is nice, but does a UART really cost 300 dollars more? (The
ShieldTV has no physical serial port, at least not one I found anywhere).

Also see
[https://github.com/andreiw/shieldTV_demo](https://github.com/andreiw/shieldTV_demo)

~~~
jpierre
Yep, I'm hoping that NVIDIA's Linux For Tegra[1] 23.1 release is installable
on the Shield TV since it'll be adding AArch64 support for the TX1.

[1] [https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/linux-
tegra](https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/linux-tegra)

------
flatM
Wish there is an affordable ARM SOC board for building DIY Spark clusters,
which has a 64bit CPU, 8 cores, gigabit ethernet, SATA, USB3, and 4GB memory
(8GB memory would be even better), and under $100.

Spec-wise, Odroid xu4 [1] from Hardkernel is very close to meet this
requirement, though still lacking in cpu and memory(only 32bit and 2GB memory
for xu4).

[1]
[http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php)

~~~
mtw
What would be the usage? Spark for?

~~~
flatM
I would use it for personal projects at home. Just for fun.

Though I would envision there might be a niche market for affordable Spark
clusters as appliances, say, one 1U box that contains 20 boards with total
160cores, 160GB memory, etc and only 200watts power consumption.

------
rsp1984
I'm curious: How are you supposed to use their card-sized module outside of
the developer kit? Is the 400-pin connector something that's standardized?

Also would you need to add your own cooling here? The developer board looks
like it has a beefy fan-based cooler whereas I don't see one on the module.

~~~
iamsalman
The SoC (card sized) has everything you'd need, not just the connectors to the
several I/O and networking interfaces you may need. You will hook in
connectors are you like with the 400-pin interface on the SoC and get going.

------
bitL
I am looking for something that can replace RPi2/Edison in my humanoid robot
for real-time computer vision. Is Jetson TX1 a good candidate? Is it a drop-in
replacement with a similar power envelope as RPi2/Edison, i.e. can be powered
by a small LiPo battery?

~~~
Narishma
It's more power hungry than RPi2. Don't know much about Edison.

~~~
jpierre
For sure: "Jetson TX1 draws as little as 1 watt of power or lower while idle,
around 8-10 watts under typical CUDA load, and up to 15 watts TDP when the
module is fully utilized, for example during gameplay and the most demanding
vision routines."[1]

Anecdotally, the RPi2 has been measured[2] around 4-6 watts under load and the
Edison was measured[3] around 1 watt.

[1] [http://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/nvidia-jetson-
tx1-...](http://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/nvidia-jetson-
tx1-supercomputer-on-module-drives-next-wave-of-autonomous-machines/)

[2] [https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-
dramble/wiki/Pow...](https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-
dramble/wiki/Power-Consumption)

[3] [https://www.openice.info/2015/07/24/three-days-with-intel-
ed...](https://www.openice.info/2015/07/24/three-days-with-intel-edison.html)

------
rockdoe
Interesting that they seem to have dropped Project Denver in favor of A57
cores. I guess the issue is that big.LITTLE has big power advantages?

~~~
kllrnohj
No, it's more that Denver sucked. A57 is just faster.

~~~
rockdoe
Got any references?

~~~
kllrnohj
Just look at the various reviews of the Nexus 9 (for example
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8701/the-google-
nexus-9-review...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8701/the-google-
nexus-9-review/6) ) and compare it to the Shield Tablet which has A15s, not
even A57s.

If Denver's JIT happens to do well the device flies, but if you're not a
benchmark or the benchmark is too large to be easily JIT'ed, then the
performance falls off a cliff.

~~~
rockdoe
I don't think those are very reliable benchmarks because they throw the entire
64/32-bit browser engine and Android stack (which at the time was the very
first spin of Android 5) into the mix.

Then there's the mix of clockspeeds and process tech.

Note that even on those it wins a lot of benchmarks. So I see little evidence
Denver sucked.

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sireat
I am trying to come up with a target market for these boards at these prices.

The development board could $500 or could be $1500 that is understandable, the
big question is where is the market for the actual devices with the $300 board
inside.

Some sort of gaming kiosks or maybe some sort of industrial use?

Most embedded users do not need that sort of GPU performance.

The people doing GPU computing would be using desktop hardware

~~~
sliken
Keep in mind the TX1 is just an early version trying to encourage adoption.
The same chip is shipping in $200 tablets, so obviously the cpu can be pretty
cheap.

Seems well within the cost of say your average pro/enthusiast level quad rotor
if it could enable dynamic path finding, obstacle avoidance, and following a
target.

Current systems can't for instance follow a bicyclist through a forest without
hitting bushes/trees.

Current systems can't fly indoor automatically and avoid furniture, people,
walls, etc.

The justification for a chip like the X1 is that it has enough CPU/GPU power
for realtime vision type applications.

------
pjmlp
While I don't have any use for it, my systems programming geek soul loves the
spec list, given the board size.

------
dharma1
good replacement for TK1. Hope we start seeing tablets with X1 soon. And
looking forward to Pascal next year!

