my thoughts exactly. this thing looks like it could be used to make a pretty bad ass htpc for the living room videos and music though :^). might look into this further!
Why not just get a Shield TV for $160 if you want this as a HTPC, or for emulation? Android TV has Plex, Netflix, prime for HTPC, and great emulation options including dolphin for Emu.
A shield is a great HTPC device, but it is closed (although it can be hacked open), if you want to have an open solution then it probably is better to get this thing.
The odroids have quite some traction, but this thing probably is better supported. The main problem the alternatives have is they are limited often to one specially adapted linux distro with almost no post sale support and shoddy closed source drivers. NVidia has a history of having good post sale support.
For the defense of odroid, they at least care about their customers and release new linux distro versions from time to time. There is nothing they can really do about the problematic soc blobs (old opengl se instead of proper opengl and vulcan, thank you Samsung for nothing)
One of the big things I always look into for all those alternatives is just how much access I have to funny things like the graphics chip and hardware acceleration. The answer, typically, is "ha ha ha go fuck yourself", so I go back to the Pi. This one seems pretty much the same way in that regard. Nvidia never got around to linking their hardware accel into ffmpeg on Jetson X1.
This will be cool in 5 years when we get A75 cores paired with Turing...
Seriously though, this is neat, and for the price you're getting a decent amount of power and capability. I don't think it'd actually cost much more to do something similar with more modern ARM SoC though.
If comes with good Linux support, i will much prefer this over a SBC with a RK3399 because every review that i see states that the support is terrible for that machine
Like all dev boards that aren't under $10 this will live and die by its documentation. If its well documented well this could be the high powered Raspberry Pi we always wanted. If they don't document and support it well its just going to be a footnote in history like so many others. I really really hope they document it well and start getting open examples out for the public to use.
it better smash the raspberry pi... it cost more than 3 times as much..... raspberry pi just needs an a/d converter and an xtra i2c channel...… oh and real ethernet... that's what i'm hoping for rasp-pi4
What do you mean by "real ethernet?" Even my RPi 2 has a tangible port that I can reach out and touch. It doesn't seem unreal, imaginary, intangible, or whatever else is the opposite of real to me and, best of all, it moves data packets.
It's there and useable. However, The Raspberry Pi 3 shares the same SMSC LAN9514 chip as its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 2, adding 10/100 Ethernet connectivity and four USB channels to the board. As before, the SMSC chip connects to the SoC via a single USB channel, acting as a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor and USB hub. USB Chip.
Good grief, I had no idea it was tied in via USB. So no, I haven't worked it very hard at all. VNC access into the GUI for occasional tweaks, updates, and restarts were about the extent of it and it worked passably well for that sort of thing. I can't imagine trying to use the Pi for anything more intensive given that configuration.
So yes, agreed, this is indeed fictional ethernet to say the least.
I'm also pretty excited about this SBC, especially since Raspberry Pi 4 is at least a year away. The spoiled brat in me wishes that they used ARM A76, but then again it's not often that an Nvidia product is sold below $100.
I do worry about the fact that the drivers are proprietary, which means it's uncertain how supported this GPU will be in future versions of Linux. Will Nvidia make sure this SBC can run Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04?
Very likely since their blobs seem to be shared over the entire product range (which is industrial customers targetted) I do not expect to have driver support on full stop within a year given nvidias past and that those products are sold also for the industry. However i also do not expect to see any decent opensource drivers for this stuff for decade long support. The thing is if you want to see that you have to go the amd route, but find me one Ryzen embedded board in the sub 150 Dollars range, there is none. And the only enduser Ryzen embedded board at all atm, was sold in limited numbers over Kickstarter. @Amd if you read this, there are people who would buy your stuff, there is a market you fail to address despite having the processors.
Since this is not using any of the new A72-75, I would much rather get an AMD Ryzen 3 series when it comes out on M-ITX. Sure it's bigger, but the endless possibilities of Windows / Linux etc is far more useful.
Does anyone else think that Nvidia is trying to finish up their obligations to TSMC for 20nm products?
Maybe a Nintendo Switch SoC refresh at a more mainstream node is imminent, and Nvidia is using this opportunity to sell a product based on the last of the 20nm wafers. Or perhaps the simpler explanation is that these dev boards are using Switch SoC rejects.
This is more like selling off semi working X1s which otherwise would have gone into the recycler. This is normal for most processor manufacturers who downbin silicon which did not pass the resptective tests, until the silicon passes the test for the respective downbinned product line.
The same processor (full though, so more grunt) is in the original Jetson TX, which has been used for autonomous drones. Nv hypes the AI on it because they provide a full set of libraries that will run on it and use the GPU to accelerate it. No other SBC around that price has this. This SBC has enough power to run some image recognition and AI NN for decisions.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! If you've been looking for a home/small business mocap systyem between "dump several tens of grand for Vicon or similar" and "like, maybe a kinect isn't /tooo/ shite once you manually fix everything..." this is the board that's going to power it. 4 synced CSI inputs, and enough on-board processing to offload all image filtering tasks to the SoC and just feed streams of coords to the host PC. Other SBCs like the Raspberry Pi lack multiple camera interfaces (or have no ability to sync them like pair on the RPi Compute Module).
Note: only the SODIMM form factor module exposes the full 12 CSI lanes, the 'dev board' version only has two lanes on one link broken out to a connector
Looks nice. But, this being NVIDIA, I couldn't help but wonder if this is NVIDIA's way of "downcycling" their leftover low-binned Tegra X1 chips that couldn't make the cut for use in a Shield or a Switch. But, 128 CUDA cores isn't bad at the price.
It seems to have SATA on the daughterboard, just not on the base board. There is at least one other base board that would give you SATA, but is rather expensive on its own.
USB 3-2-SATA adapters work just fine, but I've not been able to get more than 150MB/s bandwidth even out of top SSDs.
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u.of.ipod - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
Looks like a promising alternative to a Raspberry Pi for users looking to build a little emulation gaming setup, albeit for significantly more cost.austinsguitar - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
my thoughts exactly. this thing looks like it could be used to make a pretty bad ass htpc for the living room videos and music though :^). might look into this further!syxbit - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
Why not just get a Shield TV for $160 if you want this as a HTPC, or for emulation?Android TV has Plex, Netflix, prime for HTPC, and great emulation options including dolphin for Emu.
werpu - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
A shield is a great HTPC device, but it is closed (although it can be hacked open), if you want to have an open solution then it probably is better to get this thing.Urza9814 - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
I see no evidence that this will be much of an open platform either. NVidia doesn't exactly have a great record on that front.Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
It can join the Odroids and various other boards as yet another nerdy kid that can't hang out with the Pi jocks.There's no shortage of alternatives to the Raspberry Pis, but all of them have failed to gain traction.
werpu - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
The odroids have quite some traction, but this thing probably is better supported.The main problem the alternatives have is they are limited often to one specially adapted linux distro with almost no post sale support and shoddy closed source drivers.
NVidia has a history of having good post sale support.
werpu - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
For the defense of odroid, they at least care about their customers and release new linux distro versions from time to time. There is nothing they can really do about the problematic soc blobs (old opengl se instead of proper opengl and vulcan, thank you Samsung for nothing)mukiex - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Yeah no this thing doesn't look any better in that regard:https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/linux-tegra
Urza9814 - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
NVidia also has a record of shoddy closed source drivers...mukiex - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
One of the big things I always look into for all those alternatives is just how much access I have to funny things like the graphics chip and hardware acceleration. The answer, typically, is "ha ha ha go fuck yourself", so I go back to the Pi. This one seems pretty much the same way in that regard. Nvidia never got around to linking their hardware accel into ffmpeg on Jetson X1.darkswordsman17 - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
This will be cool in 5 years when we get A75 cores paired with Turing...Seriously though, this is neat, and for the price you're getting a decent amount of power and capability. I don't think it'd actually cost much more to do something similar with more modern ARM SoC though.
WJMazepas - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
Man, this is a really cute board.If comes with good Linux support, i will much prefer this over a SBC with a RK3399 because every review that i see states that the support is terrible for that machine
Ikefu - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
Like all dev boards that aren't under $10 this will live and die by its documentation. If its well documented well this could be the high powered Raspberry Pi we always wanted. If they don't document and support it well its just going to be a footnote in history like so many others. I really really hope they document it well and start getting open examples out for the public to use.HStewart - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Well you can see the documentation on the following site.https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/buy/jetson-n...
voicequal - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
This has most of the specs I was hoping for the Raspberry Pi 4, and the price is reasonable. If there is good Linux support, this could be a hit.HStewart - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Well here you go - you can pre-order this thing right now - fully with SDK environment. It looks like with this price they are out smash Raspberry PIhttps://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/buy/jetson-n...
HStewart - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
I wish I was younger - this stuff looks like geek heaven.PeachNCream - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
You're not going to get any younger so you may as well get one and have a little fun. Appease your inner child before it winds up dying of starvation.HStewart - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Well last night, I dance for 3 hours and part of it on dance team at age of 58HardwareDufus - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
it better smash the raspberry pi... it cost more than 3 times as much..... raspberry pi just needs an a/d converter and an xtra i2c channel...… oh and real ethernet... that's what i'm hoping for rasp-pi4PeachNCream - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
What do you mean by "real ethernet?" Even my RPi 2 has a tangible port that I can reach out and touch. It doesn't seem unreal, imaginary, intangible, or whatever else is the opposite of real to me and, best of all, it moves data packets.HardwareDufus - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
It's there and useable. However, The Raspberry Pi 3 shares the same SMSC LAN9514 chip as its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 2, adding 10/100 Ethernet connectivity and four USB channels to the board. As before, the SMSC chip connects to the SoC via a single USB channel, acting as a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor and USB hub. USB Chip.kgardas - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Yes, but internally it's connected to USB so you do have USB latency/speed on this ethernet which is kind of sad.mode_13h - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Exactly.mode_13h - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Because the Pi's ethernet is a joke. You clearly haven't used it for anything (except, maybe reaching out and touching).PeachNCream - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
Good grief, I had no idea it was tied in via USB. So no, I haven't worked it very hard at all. VNC access into the GUI for occasional tweaks, updates, and restarts were about the extent of it and it worked passably well for that sort of thing. I can't imagine trying to use the Pi for anything more intensive given that configuration.So yes, agreed, this is indeed fictional ethernet to say the least.
mode_13h - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
Thanks for your candor.abufrejoval - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
thanks for the link (and the article, Andrei!), just ordered one: Funny Easter egg, sort of squarish ;-)HStewart - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
You are welcome. I hope it helps and I am debating but my RPI 2 are sitting in box ( 2 of them ) along with Adreno.HardwareDufus - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
not enough i/o.. sure I could string together a bunch of MCP3424s and MCP23017s together … but it would be nice to have more on board.wizfactor - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
I'm also pretty excited about this SBC, especially since Raspberry Pi 4 is at least a year away. The spoiled brat in me wishes that they used ARM A76, but then again it's not often that an Nvidia product is sold below $100.I do worry about the fact that the drivers are proprietary, which means it's uncertain how supported this GPU will be in future versions of Linux. Will Nvidia make sure this SBC can run Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04?
werpu - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Very likely since their blobs seem to be shared over the entire product range (which is industrial customers targetted)I do not expect to have driver support on full stop within a year given nvidias past and that those products are sold also for the industry.
However i also do not expect to see any decent opensource drivers for this stuff for decade long support. The thing is if you want to see that you have to go the amd route, but find me one Ryzen embedded board in the sub 150 Dollars range, there is none. And the only enduser Ryzen embedded board at all atm, was sold in limited numbers over Kickstarter.
@Amd if you read this, there are people who would buy your stuff, there is a market you fail to address despite having the processors.
Valis - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link
Since this is not using any of the new A72-75, I would much rather get an AMD Ryzen 3 series when it comes out on M-ITX. Sure it's bigger, but the endless possibilities of Windows / Linux etc is far more useful.wizfactor - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Does anyone else think that Nvidia is trying to finish up their obligations to TSMC for 20nm products?Maybe a Nintendo Switch SoC refresh at a more mainstream node is imminent, and Nvidia is using this opportunity to sell a product based on the last of the 20nm wafers. Or perhaps the simpler explanation is that these dev boards are using Switch SoC rejects.
Still, these will likely make very nice SBCs.
werpu - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
This is more like selling off semi working X1s which otherwise would have gone into the recycler.This is normal for most processor manufacturers who downbin silicon which did not pass the resptective tests, until the silicon passes the test for the respective downbinned product line.
werpu - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Btw. love it how they gave it another AI spin, while it is basically the processor in the Switch and Shield.frenchy_2001 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
The same processor (full though, so more grunt) is in the original Jetson TX, which has been used for autonomous drones.Nv hypes the AI on it because they provide a full set of libraries that will run on it and use the GPU to accelerate it. No other SBC around that price has this.
This SBC has enough power to run some image recognition and AI NN for decisions.
Benaldo - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Can you run Retropie on it?edzieba - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! If you've been looking for a home/small business mocap systyem between "dump several tens of grand for Vicon or similar" and "like, maybe a kinect isn't /tooo/ shite once you manually fix everything..." this is the board that's going to power it. 4 synced CSI inputs, and enough on-board processing to offload all image filtering tasks to the SoC and just feed streams of coords to the host PC. Other SBCs like the Raspberry Pi lack multiple camera interfaces (or have no ability to sync them like pair on the RPi Compute Module).edzieba - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Note: only the SODIMM form factor module exposes the full 12 CSI lanes, the 'dev board' version only has two lanes on one link broken out to a connectormode_13h - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
I hope this gets the high-end Pi-clones to finally break away from always using A53 cores.And I wish it supported OpenCL, but neither does Pi. Pi v4 surely will.
eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Looks nice. But, this being NVIDIA, I couldn't help but wonder if this is NVIDIA's way of "downcycling" their leftover low-binned Tegra X1 chips that couldn't make the cut for use in a Shield or a Switch. But, 128 CUDA cores isn't bad at the price.plonk420 - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link
do we think this is a standard Ethernet port opposed to USB?frenchy_2001 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
Most probably. Tegra X1 includes a gigabit ethernet on the SoC.andrewaggb - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
If it had a sata port I could probably build a small security system out of it.mode_13h - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
You could use a USB 3.0 port for storage.mode_13h - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
Or, you could pay a bit more and use an Intel Gemini Lake board. At least you know that'll be be fully-supported for the foreseeable future.abufrejoval - Tuesday, April 30, 2019 - link
It seems to have SATA on the daughterboard, just not on the base board. There is at least one other base board that would give you SATA, but is rather expensive on its own.USB 3-2-SATA adapters work just fine, but I've not been able to get more than 150MB/s bandwidth even out of top SSDs.