Good news! Popular Nvidia hardware gets a free upgrade that improves performance by up to 70%, but it’s not for gamers
- Jetson Nano is Nvidia’s very popular dev kit
- Nvidia cut its price by half to $249 in an effort to attract more developers to its platform
- It also released a firmware that “unlocks” up to 70% of performance for free.
In a move that will likely raise more than a few eyebrows, Nvidia has rolled out a free upgrade that significantly improves the performance of its Jetson hardware line, making it “super.”
The new software update is primarily aimed at developers working on AI and robotics applications and delivers a stunning 57-70% increase in INT8 TOPS performance.
This boost applies to a range of devices, from the Jetson Orin Nano 4GB to the Jetson Orin NX 16GB, representing a quantum leap in computing power for edge AI applications.
Why wasn’t it unlocked sooner?
What makes this upgrade particularly impressive is that it requires no hardware changes. Nvidia has somehow mysteriously unlocked double the memory bandwidth, boosting it to 102 GB/s on the Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit – all while retaining the original hardware specs.
The upgrade not only improves raw computing performance, but also increases generative AI capabilities by 70%, allowing developers to deploy advanced AI models, including vision transformers and large language models, on compact devices.
This development platform, which has also seen a price drop from $499 to $249 to attract more developers to build robotics on Nvidia hardware, makes advanced AI development accessible to a broader audience, including hobbyists and students.
Featuring an Nvidia Ampere architecture GPU and a 6-core Arm CPU, the developer kit supports up to four high-resolution cameras and concurrent AI applications, making it ideal for prototyping and real-world edge AI implementations.
ServeTheHome raises a valid question about this upgrade: “So somehow, in a 25W envelope, with the same hardware, we get double the memory bandwidth and more raw compute performance.”
The site adds: “Reasonable people will wonder if the hardware was capable of this performance in the first place, why not unlock it via the Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Launch in 2022 or the Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit Launch in 2023 ? Do you have these devices? It just feels strange. Still, it’s great that we don’t have to buy modules again to get the new performance.”