NVIDIA announces Jetson Nano: A US$99 tiny, yet mighty AI computer

NVIDIA announced the Jetson Nano, an AI computer that makes it possible to create millions of intelligent systems.

The small but powerful CUDA-X AI computer delivers 472 GFLOPS of compute performance for running modern AI workloads and is highly power-efficient, consuming as little as 5 watts.

Unveiled at the GPU Technology Conference by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Jetson Nano comes in two versions, the US$99 devkit for developers, makers and enthusiasts and the US$129 production-ready module for companies looking to create mass-market edge systems.

Jetson Nano supports high-resolution sensors, can process many sensors in parallel and can run multiple modern neural networks on each sensor stream. It also supports many popular AI frameworks, making it easy for developers to integrate their preferred models and frameworks into the product.

Jetson Nano joins the Jetson family lineup, which also includes the powerful Jetson AGX Xavier for fully autonomous machines and Jetson TX2 for AI at the edge. Ideal for enterprises, startups and researchers, the Jetson platform now extends its reach with Jetson Nano to 30 million makers, developers, inventors, and students globally.

NVIDIA autonomous machines VP Deepu Talla says, "Jetson Nano makes AI more accessible to everyone, and is supported by the same underlying architecture and software that powers the world's supercomputers.

Jetson Nano Developer Kit 

The power of AI is largely out of reach for the maker community and in education, because typical technologies do not pack enough computing power and lack an AI software platform.

At US$99, the Jetson Nano Developer Kit brings the power of modern AI to a low-cost platform, supposedly enabling a new wave of innovation from makers, inventors, developers and students.

They can build AI projects that weren't previously possible and supposedly take existing projects to the next level, mobile robots and drones, digital assistants, automated appliances, and more.

The kit comes with out-of-the-box support for full desktop Linux, compatibility with many peripherals and accessories, and ready-to-use projects and tutorials that help makers get started with AI fast.

NVIDIA also manages the Jetson developer forum, where people can get answers to technical questions.