Nvidia launches new board for robotics development
Company says its IoT platform for manufacturing, industrial, retail will be made possible by Nvidia’s artificially intelligent-powered Jetson
Nvidia has unveiled the Nvidia Jetson TX2, a credit card-sized platform that it says delivers AI computing at the edge – opening the door to “powerfully intelligent” factory robots, commercial drones and smart cameras for AI cities.
Jetson TX2 offers twice the performance of its predecessor, or it can run at more than twice the power efficiency, while drawing less than 7.5 watts of power. This allows Jetson TX2 to run larger, deeper neural networks on edge devices.
The result: smarter devices with higher accuracy and faster response times for tasks like image classification, navigation and speech recognition.
Deepu Talla, vice president and general manager of the Tegra business at Nvidia, says: “Jetson TX2 brings powerful AI capabilities at the edge, making possible a new class of intelligent machines.
“These devices will enable intelligent video analytics that keep our cities smarter and safer, new kinds of robots that optimize manufacturing, and new collaboration that makes long-distance work more efficient.”
The Jetson TX2 joins the Jetson TX1 and TK1 products for embedded computing. Jetson is an open platform that is accessible to anyone for developing advanced AI solutions at the edge – from enterprise companies and startups to researchers and high school students.
Partner support
Nvidia says Jetson is a powerful platform that enables Cisco to add AI features such as facial and speech recognition to its Cisco Spark products that connect everyone, everywhere.
Cisco is able to drive new experiences and remove the barriers between physical and virtual spaces, thanks to the Jetson TX2’s advanced technology capabilities in AI computing and graphics.
Donald Bossi, president of First, an international K-12 nonprofit focused on science and technology, says: “For years, Nvidia has demonstrated its commitment to First through multifaceted support by providing Jetson developer kits for robot builds, online training resources, and team and event funding,.
“Through these efforts, Nvidia is helping to inspire more young students to become innovators and inventors.”
System specs and software – key features of Jetson TX2 include:
- GPU: 256-core NVIDIA Pascal architecture-based GPU offering best-in-class performance
- CPU: Dual 64-bit NVIDIA Denver 2, Quad ARM A57
- Video: 4K x 2K 60fps encode and decode
- Camera: 12 CSI lanes supporting up to 6 cameras; 2.5 gigabytes/second/lane
- Memory: 8GB LPDDR4; 58.3 gigabytes/second
- Storage: 32GB eMMC
- Connectivity: 802.11ac WLAN, Bluetooth
- Networking: 1GB Ethernet
- OS Support: Linux for Tegra
- Size: 50mm x 87mm
The Jetson family is supported by the most comprehensive SDK for AI computing, JetPack 3.0, which makes it easy to integrate AI into a wide variety of applications, and support the following:
- TensorRT 1.0, a high-performance neural network inference engine for production deployment of deep learning applications
- cuDNN 5.1, a GPU-accelerated library of primitives for deep neural networks
- VisionWorks 1.6, a software development package for computer vision and image processing
- The latest graphics drivers and APIs, including OpenGL 4.5, OpenGL ES 3.2, EGL 1.4 and Vulkan 1.0
- CUDA 8, which turns the GPU into a general-purpose massively parallel processor, giving developers access to tremendous performance and power-efficiency