Developer kit with cloud-native support announced by NVIDIA

NVIDIA announced availability of the NVIDIA® Jetson Xavier™ NX developer kit with cloud-native support — and the extension of this support to the entire NVIDIA Jetson™ edge computing lineup for autonomous machines. 

The Jetson Xavier NX module is the ideal platform to accelerate AI applications, delivering greater than 10x higher performance compared to its widely adopted predecessor, Jetson TX2. Using cloud-native technologies, developers can take advantage of the module’s high AI and compute performance in its credit card-sized form factor to drive innovation and deploy AI at scale.

With support for cloud-native technologies now available across the NVIDIA Jetson lineup, manufacturers of intelligent machines and developers of AI applications can build and deploy high-quality, software-defined features on embedded and edge devices targeting robotics, smart cities, healthcare, industrial IoT and more.

Cloud-native support helps manufacturers and developers implement frequent improvements, improve accuracy and use the latest features with Jetson-based AI edge devices. And developers can quickly deploy new algorithms throughout an application’s lifecycle, at scale, while minimizing downtime. 

“NVIDIA has created an incredible amount of optimized AI software across multiple industries, and now, with cloud-native support, customers can leverage that software innovation through our high-performance, low-power Jetson family,” said Deepu Talla, vice president and general manager of edge computing at NVIDIA. “The Jetson Xavier NX is the result of years of experience and leadership in edge computing, enabling customers to deploy real-world AI applications.”

NVIDIA Jetson is the leading AI-at-the-edge computing platform, with nearly half a million developers. NVIDIA’s NGC™ registry hosts several containerized, pre-trained AI models that serve as building blocks in AI application development.

Developers can work with the models from NGC and the latest NVIDIA tools and optimize directly on a Jetson Xavier NX developer kit or other Jetson developer kits. They can also use a workstation with cross-compile toolchain or even cloud development workflows using containers coming soon to NGC.

Ecosystem Support

Jetson Xavier NX with cloud-native capabilities has received strong endorsements from the embedded computing ecosystem.

Moe Tanabian, general manager of Azure Edge Devices at Microsoft, said: “The Jetson Xavier NX enables AI at the edge with powerful computing performance, while keeping the small form factor of the Jetson Nano. This makes it possible to deploy containerized Azure solutions with AI acceleration at scale for applications like processing multiple camera feeds, more sophisticated robotics applications and edge AI gateway scenarios.”

Janakiram MSV, analyst at Janakiram & Associates, said: “NVIDIA’s architectural ability to leverage its AI software technology from multiple industries, from the data center to its Jetson AI edge solutions, is a dramatic accelerator for the embedded and robotics world. The embedded and robotics world is about to transform from fixed-function software devices to modern, software-defined computers.”

Sertac Karaman, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: “The NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX allows us to get higher performance within a tighter size and power budget, enabling innovative development of compact drones for a variety of practical applications. We believe the Jetson platform with cloud-native support is an important new development to help build and deploy future generations of autonomous machines.”

Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit

The Jetson Xavier NX developer kit is the development platform for the Jetson Xavier NX module. Smaller than a credit card (70x45mm), the energy-efficient module delivers server-class performance — up to 21 TOPS at 15W, or 14 TOPS at 10W.

As a result, Jetson Xavier NX opens the door for embedded edge-computing devices that demand increased performance to support AI workloads but are constrained by size, weight, power budget or cost.

Powered by the NVIDIA CUDA-X™ accelerated computing stack and Jetpack™ SDK, which comes with NVIDIA container runtime, the Jetson Xavier NX developer kit combines a reference module and carrier board with a full Linux software development environment.

Customers are supported with the latest NVIDIA tools for application development and optimization, including cloud-native development and deployment workflows. The Jetson Xavier NX developer kit and the Jetson Xavier NX module are now available through NVIDIA’s distribution channels for $399.