Author: Gary Sims / Source: Android Authority
Nvidia has been in the machine learning and AI game for a number of years now. The company launched the Jetson TX1 “Supercomputer-on-Module” back in 2015 as an embedded solution for robots, drones, and self-driving vehicles that need to do a lot of visual computing.
It was the start of a whole range of “AI” products from Nvidia that has proved to be successful. Nvidia says there are hundreds of thousands of Jetson developers today. While it was a workable solution for commercial enterprises, its $599 price tag meant it was often too costly for makers, hobbyists, and amateur enthusiasts.Today that has all changed with the launch of the Jetson Nano, a $99 AI computing development kit that opens the way to a Raspberry Pi-like revolution — this time for machine learning.
The secret sauce in Nvidia’s AI products is, of course, its GPUs. The Jetson TX1 used a 1024-GFLOP Maxwell GPU with 256 CUDA cores. The TX2 offers 1.3 TFLOPs using a 256-core Pascal GPU, and the top-of-the-range Jetson AGX Xavier breaks 10 TFLOPs with its 512-core Nvidia Volta GPU. But the Jetson AGX Xavier also breaks the $1,000 barrier as well! For the $99 Jetson Nano, Nvidia has opted for a 128 CUDA core GPU, based on the Maxwell architecture. It offers 472 GFLOPs.
Supporting the GPU is a 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A57-based CPU, 4GB of RAM, a video processor — which can handle up to 4K 30fps encode or 4K 60fps decode — and support for PCIE and USB 3.0.
The video capabilities of the Jetson Nano are impressive. The idea isn’t that you can watch 4K video, but rather that the unit can process multiple video streams (think about drones with multiple cameras) for object detection, tracking, and obstacle avoidance. While 4K 60fps sounds nice, the Jetson Nano is capable of decoding eight video/camera feeds at Full HD at 30 frames per second! Once decoded the streams can be processed simultaneously by the machine learning algorithms for object tracking etc.
Also read: How to build your own digital assistant with Raspberry Pi
The Jetson Nano comes in two forms. A module — which measures just 70 x 45mm — for use in final production ready designs, and a development kit that resembles a Raspberry Pi and offers a turnkey solution for developers and enthusiasts. The former comes with 16GB of eMMC on-board storage while the latter uses a microSD card.
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