Bucking the Trend, NVIDIA Brings Jetson Orin Module Availability to July — and Teases the Nano Next
End-of-year target now brought forward with the AGX Orin 32GB modules landing in July — owing to high demand from Jetson developers.
In a time of continued component shortages and resulting launch delays, NVIDIA is bucking the trend with some surprise but certainly welcome news: availability of the Jetson AGX Orin and Orin NX modules, designed for high-performance embedded artificial intelligence projects, are being brought forward — with the first due to start shipping by July.
Announced late last year, the AGX Orin and Orin NX systems-on-module (SOMs) are NVIDIA's latest entries in the long-running Jetson family of embedded AI systems. Built around the company's Ampere architecture, the Orin family offers a dramatic gain in performance over its predecessors — up to 275 TOPS of INT8 compute in a target module-only 60W power envelope.
While the impressive Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit launched a month ago, however, those building around the SOMs were facing a considerable gap between prototyping and production: The bare modules weren't expected to hit the market until later this year, a schedule NVIDIA has now accelerated owing to what NVIDIA's Amit Goel describes as strong feedback from developers who, having quickly ported their projects from earlier Jetson modules to the new Orin range, are keen to get cracking with production.
Under the new roadmap, the Jetson AGX Orin 32GB SOM — offering a lower performance than the module included in the Developer Kit, but with the same amount of RAM — is now due to start shipping in July; the Jetson Orin NX 16GB, which targets lower-power deployments, will follow in September. Those wanting the maximum performance, meanwhile, will find the top-end Jetson AGX Orin 64GB available in October, while the lowest-cost Jetson Orin NX 8GB will follow in December.
The company's roadmap also hints at an upcoming product refresh for the maker and educational markets, with a "Nano Next" — designed as a successor to the popular Jetson Nano — penciled in for 2023, alongside an industrial version of the AGX Orin modules. About the new Nano, however, NVIDIA is silent, stating only that it's "in planning."
More information on the Jetson AGX Orin is available in our hands-on review.