Nvidia’s $249 dev kit promises cheap, small AI power

Nvidia has announced the latest in its Jetson Orin Nano AI computer line, the Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit. Kind of like a Raspberry Pi but with more powerful AI processing, the $249 minicomputer packs more AI processing punch than the kit that came before it — for half the price. It is available to buy now.

The Jetson Nano line has been an affordable way for hobbyists and makers to harness the power of AI and robotics projects since its launch in 2019. Nvidia says the Nano Super’s neural processing is 70 percent higher, at 67 TOPS, than the 40 TOPS Nano. It also has 50 percent more memory bandwidth, at 102GB/s, which should speed up those tasks.

The Jetson Orin Nano Super kit uses the same hardware as the original Orin Nano kit, and the company says it will get the same performance benefits with the new JetPack update. Nvidia says the improvements come from “a new power mode that increases GPU, memory, and CPU clocks.”

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang demonstrated the Nano Super in a video:

The developer kit includes a reference carrier board and a Jetson Orin Nano 8GB system-on-module, which includes an Nvidia Ampere GPU with tensor cores and a 6-core Arm CPU. Nvidia calls the Nano Super Developer Kit the “ideal solution” for building chatbots or AI virtual agents, as well as AI-based robots.