New NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX Launched

Today NVIDIA is launching a new set of edge computing platforms. The new NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX offers more performance in a compact package. Further, it joins a growing family of processors that the company hopes will power next-generation robotics and IoT devices.

NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX Overview

The NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX runs at 15W or less for up to 21 INT8 TOPS of AI performance. It fits in the Jetson Nano form factor which gives some flexibility in terms of deployment for companies building around the platform. Further it runs NVIDIA CUDA-X which helps unify a stack from the Tesla V100’s and Volta-Next GPUs in the data center to the Jetson edge devices.

Here are the full specs for the $399 Jetson Xavier NX in both 10W and 15W operating modes. One will see features like support for multiple cameras and PCIe Gen3. One will also note that NVIDIA is still using 10/100/1000 Ethernet and not Wi-Fi on this model. The lack of Wi-Fi was noted as a drawback of the $99 NVIDIA Jetson Nano. Instead, one needs to add this onto the platform.

In terms of performance, the Jetson Xavier NX falls below Xavier and above the company’s other platforms with a massive performance bump over the Nano.

Next, let us look at where this slots into the current Jetson lineup.

NVIDIA Jetson Family

Here is the new Jetson family with the new NX platform added.

Here is the spec sheet comparison for the four platforms that make up the NVIDIA Jetson Family now.

Interesting to note here is that the Jetson Xavier NX has half of the eMMC storage of the $99 Nano. On the other hand, it can handle more video streams and has more performance even at 10W. Compared to the Nano and TX2, the Jetson Xavier NX also updates the GPU architecture to Volta like the Jetson AGX Xavier and adopts the newer Arm-based “Carmel” CPU architecture with L3 cache.

Final Words

For NVIDIA, this is the way to expand TAM. For the most part, the data center and data science industries have accepted the idea of a NVIDIA GPU in the data center. The real opportunity is for NVIDIA to leverage that early lead into a lead at the edge with higher-value compute in applications such as IoT and robotics. A new NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX is yet another step in that journey.