NVIDIA Announces The Jetson TX2, Powered By NVIDIA's "Denver 2" CPU & Pascal Graphics

Written by Michael Larabel in Computers on 7 March 2017 at 09:00 PM EST. Page 1 of 1. 51 Comments.

NVIDIA has made the surprise announcement of the Jetson TX2 and it's powered by dual custom-designed 64-bit Denver 2 CPUs plus quad Cortex-A57 cores while boasting Pascal graphics with 256 CUDA cores.

The embargo just expired concerning the Jetson TX2, the successor to the 2015 Jetson TX1 module. The Jetson TX2 is a drop-in replacement for this "supercomputer module" and it's pretty damn exciting. This new Jetson embedded module is considered a "7.5 Watt supercomputer" and its new SoC features Pascal graphics with 256 CUDA cores while its CPU is an HMP Dual Denver plus a quad ARM Cortex-A57. This module, which can also be inserted into a developer board form, has 8GB of LPDDR4 memory at 58.3 GB/s memory bandwidth. The Jetson TX2 is geared for 4K x 2K 60Hz encode and decode. Onboard storage is 32GB eMMC plus SDIO and SATA. The Jetson TX2 supports PCI Express 2.0 1x4 + 1x1 and has both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 support along with Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11ac WLAN, in common with the Jetson TX1.

The Jetson TX2 module is considered a drop-in replacement to the Jetson TX1 on all fronts while doing so should yield a large performance improvement for those making use of the JTX2 within products, build-your-own-robots, and other use-cases.

I've been quite excited about the Jetson TX2 since being briefed on it last week, almost as exciting as the AMD Ryzen shipping last week, at least for those interested in ARM Linux... In part it's so exciting for being able to test the 64-bit Denver 2 processors. Similar to past NVIDIA developer boards, the official OS support is "Linux for Tegra", which includes the stock Ubuntu stock image.

The Jetson TX2 has a "MAX-Q" maximum efficiency mode where it delivers up to 2x the energy efficiency of the Jetson TX1 and less than 7.5 Watt power draw while the "MAX-P" maximum performance mode claims to deliver 2x the performance of the Jetson TX1 while consuming less than 15 Watts.

The Jetson TX2 developer kit can be pre-ordered today for $599 USD and will be shipping beginning 14 March for the US and Europe. The TX2 module price is $399. The Jetson TX1 developer kit price meanwhile has dropped to $499.

As part of the TX2 launch, NVIDIA is also announcing JetPack 3.0 that promises new multimedia APIs, up to 2x greater system performance, switches to a Linux 4.4 kernel base, and other changes for this software developer component for AI and deep learning workloads.

NVIDIA has sent out the Jetson TX2 for testing at Phoronix and there will be a full review on that when its separate embargo expires next week. It should be a pretty exciting and powerful ARM board, especially with not yet seeing any Qualcomm Falkor development boards yet and AMD's ARM efforts not materializing. More details and benchmark results on the Jetson TX2 next week!

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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.