Cheap developer kit wants to bring 'AI computing to everyone'

The NVIDIA Jetson Nano

NVIDIA has unveiled its latest diminutive developer device: a $99 computer with full support for (you guessed it) Ubuntu.

Sold as a complete compute solution, the Jetson Nano Developer Kit wants to let embedded designers, researchers, and DIY makers harness the power of AI, all at an affordable price.

A NVIDIA’s JetPack SDK provides a ‘complete desktop Linux environment based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS’, replete with accelerated graphics, NVIDIA CUDA toolkit support, and more.

NVIDIA say developers will find it “easy” to install leading open-source Machine Learning (ML) frameworks like TensorFlow, Caffe and Keras. Frameworks for computer vision and robotics development like OpenCV and ROS are also available via the SDK.

The JetPack 4.2 SDK [flash on a microSD card] provides a complete desktop Linux environment for Jetson Nano based on Ubuntu 18.04 with accelerated graphics, support for NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit 10.0, and libraries such as cuDNN 7.3 and TensorRT 5,” Nvidia says of the nimble Nano dev kit.

But how powerful is it?

472 GFLOPS of Compute Power

According to NVIDIA the Jetson Nano delivers 472 GFLOPS of compute performance from its quad-core 64-bit ARM CPU and a 128-core integrated NVIDIA GPU.



CPU 64-bit Quad-core ARM A57 @ 1.43GHz GPU 128-core NVIDIA Maxwell @ 921MHz Memory 4GB 64-bit LPDDR4 @ 1600MHz | 25.6 GB/s Video Encoder 4Kp30 | (4x) 1080p30 | (2x) 1080p60 Video Decoder 4Kp60 | (2x) 4Kp30 | (8x) 1080p30 | (4x) 1080p60

It’s pretty powerful for the price, offering more than enough grunt to run multiple neural network apps in parallel for tasks like image classification and speech processing.

Heck, perhaps I could use it to predict and correct my typos before I make them! 😆

Connectivity is also a major feature, with 4 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and eDP, Gigabit Ethernet, as well as GPIO, I2C, I2S, SPI, and UART.

This isn’t a regular PC, folks

The NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit is made up of the Jetson Nano module (which will be available to buy standalone in June) pre-attached to a carrier board.

A lower-power high-performance package; the Jetson Nano requires a mere 5W of energy to run (up to 10W for intensive applications).



Lest anyone get excited let me remind you that the NVIDIA Jetson Nano is not a regular computer.

Nope, this isn’t the kind of device you’ll run Steam on, stream Netflix to, or get creative in The GIMP with. I mean, you (probably) could do all that, but it’s not what this tech tinkerers’ toy is tailored to do.

Instead it’s best suited to ingenious engineers and those hoping to harness the power of AI and machine learning in their own projects at a cost-effective entry point.

Buy the Jetson Nano Dev Kit

You can learn lots more about the Jetson Nano over on the NVIDIA dev blog.

The device is available to pre-order direct from NVIDIA in the US. Several online stockists, including Arrow, SeedStudio and SparkFun, plan to carry the dev kit too.

Buy the NVIDIA Jetson Nano on SparkFun

NVIDIA says that the Jetson Nano Developer Kit will ship by the end of March and that the Jetson Nano module will be available to buy from select distributors worldwide starting June 2019.

Thanks Dingo Lingo