At GTC today, NVIDIA announces the new Jetson Nano 2GB priced at only $59! Looky here:
Background
Back in March 2019, NVIDIA introduced the the Jetson Nano. Today, NVIDIA announces it’s little brother, the Jetson Nano 2GB. The Jetson Nano 2GB is available for pre-order. In addition to the Nano 2GB you’ll also need a USB-C power supply and a micro-SD card. Here’s some Amazon affiliate links:
- Jetson Nano 2GB: https://amzn.to/3lafQWE
- USB C power supply: https://amzn.to/34oIpcr
- USB C power supply with On/Off switch: https://amzn.to/36z794i
- 64GB micro SD card: https://amzn.to/30AYOcq
I recommend you get 64GB micro SD cards if you plan on following the Jetson AI Fundamentals course.
There are a some differences in addition to the price. First, the differences in the hardware:
- The Jetson Nano 2GB has 2 GB of main memory, where as the current Jetson Nano has 4 GB.
- By comparison, the Jetson Nano 2GB has 1 MIPI-CSI camera connector, whereas the Jetson Nano with 4GB has 2 camera connectors.
- The Jetson Nano 2GB has fewer I/O connectors, and some of the header pins on the Nano 2GB are not populated, for example the fan header and the POE header. However, there are places on the carrier board for adding those headers.
Second, the major difference in the software is that the Jetson Nano 2GB runs lxde as its desktop. The Jetson Nano uses GNOME. If you run lxde on a Jetson Nano, you save more than 1GB of memory versus running GNOME. That means that you may think of the Jetson Nano 2GB of having more memory than it would originally appear. The 2GB will run the same software as the Jetson Nano or other members of the Jetson family.
You get most of the power of a Jetson Nano, but it costs 40% less!
Rather than replicate all of the specs and performance benchmarks on this blog, here’s a link to the NVIDIA blog entry where they detail the important parts. The 2GB uses the same Tegra X1 SoC that the Jetson Nano uses, the only major difference on the Jetson module is 2GB instead of 4GB of main memory.
Jetson AI Certification
Along with the Jetson Nano 2GB, NVIDIA also is making available the Jetson AI Fundamentals series as the start of their Jetson AI Certification course. Looky here:
I’ll say that the series is very important, because I helped make some of the videos, centered around build and programming a JetBot! Looky here:
I’ll point out that the JetBot even has a spiffy song.
Conclusion
The Jetson Nano 2GB is a great entry level device for getting started in machine learning for makers, students and educators. For those projects that need a little more compute power than the usual suspects deliver, it’s a great addition. And because the Nano 2GB is software compatible with the rest of the Jetson lineup, it means that you can upgrade easily if you need more compute power later on. Check it out!
2 Responses
it seems to lack a barrel connector, so if you want to overclock it, maybe you can’t supply the jetson 2GB with enough juice. I’m thinking it might be better for most people just to get the 4GB, especially if they want to use it for emulation for example. Too much removed from the 2GB to keep the cost down.
Can I use a larger size SD card? for example 256 GB SD card? Thank you for the response