NVIDIA Rolls Out Jetson TX1 Developer Board SE At $199 USD

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Rolls Out Jetson TX1 Developer Board SE At $199 USD

For those looking for a very capable ARM developer board but have previously been put off by the Jetson TX1 at $579 USD, they now have a $199 developer board...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Jetson-TX1-SE

[Nille]

The price is close to good now, how is the driver situation now for the Nvidia SoCs? Can i use a Upstream Kernel? Are Blobs required that limit the usage of other software?

[rene]

also, US & Canada developers only :-/ Thank you very much Nvidia, as friendly and welcoming as ever, ... :-/

[Michael_S]

The price is close to good now, how is the driver situation now for the Nvidia SoCs? Can i use a Upstream Kernel? Are Blobs required that limit the usage of other software?

Seconded. Since it's Nvidia, I imagine getting good performance from the GPU requires a proprietary driver. But otherwise, does this work out of the box with the appropriate Linux-arm kernel?

[starshipeleven]

The price is close to good now, how is the driver situation now for the Nvidia SoCs? Can i use a Upstream Kernel? Are Blobs required that limit the usage of other software?

afaik NVIDIA contributes directly to noveau for their embedded stuff http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ouveau-Support

And by googling a bit more it seems there are guys running Arch with kernel 4.12 on it https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/t...b-not-working/
(although there are some regressions it seems)

[starshipeleven]

The price is good now? Let me think, six Raspberry Pi 3s (24 cores for distcc) or one of these, hmmm... the graphics might be worth $65 more anyways. I'll give them $99 for it and they have to register with me for the privilege.

who the fuck buys a Jetson to only use the CPU on it!?

[phoron]

afaik NVIDIA contributes directly to noveau for their embedded stuff http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ouveau-Support

And by googling a bit more it seems there are guys running Arch with kernel 4.12 on it https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/t...b-not-working/
(although there are some regressions it seems)

Thank you, according to that page it seems there's a blob required for USB or ethernet to work. I haven't looked at whether someone has tried linux-libre on it.

Flashing seems to require a proprietary program (but that was in 2015). No idea if nouveau requires blobs or not.

And about the developer program, it's a pity that it's only for north-americans. And one unit per person. I think it is not forbidden to resell it though, so maybe people can buy one just to resell it second hand abroad??? (I haven't read all legalese but I haven't found a clear prohibition on resale, more like extending the agreement obligations to anyone you give the materials). 200 USD + a little margin could still find some buyer (at least if support was better).

But I think the NDA-like agreement is even worse. If they try to get anything upstreamed they could be more legally friendly:

Highlights/summary from Register Developer Agreement and privacy Policy.

NVIDIA can change the terms at any time. Developer can't.

You can't share any info obtained from the NVIDIA developer program.

The information is for non-commercial use only.

You must send NVIDIA all test results, source code and bug
reports, yours or anybody else's:

"• As a condition of
participating in the Program, You agree to provide NVIDIA with
any suggestions, comments or other feedback, whether verbally or
in written or source code form, including any and all test
results, error data, bugs, reports or other information, however
learned and by whomever collected, relating to the Materials
provided by NVIDIA to You hereunder (collectively defined
as "Feedback")."

(except spam, confidential info or infringing
stuff). Nvidia will own whatever you send them.

Nvidia's confidential information may not be clearly marked so
and developer still must keep it confidential.

Nvida marketers can contact you by email or phone, even after
you send them your termination of the agreement.

You must submit to Santa Clara, Delaware, USA courts about the
agreement, and obey USA laws (at least export legislation).

Nvidia may collect information form users from their servers
or from third parties, and share it with third parties. There
are weak provisions on what NVIDIA requires those third parties
to do with that personal information, and purposes include targeted
advertising or whatever NVIDIA agrees to request to them.

They ignore "do not track" signals and they allow
others (e.g. Facebook, twitter, pinterest) to collect information
on Nvidia web visitors. Personal information is processed
internationally.

To buy the board I think you also have to agree to a privacy policy
from a company running the web shop for them, but I didn't bother reading it.


I'm not saying this is terrible, maybe it is less terrrible than some other options (like DRMed remote controlled hardware, devices with infringing SDKs, proprietary GPUS, more blobby , etc.). But it's sad that the market is so crippled. And I bet they could do better if they tried.

[rene]

afaik NVIDIA contributes directly to noveau for their embedded stuff http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ouveau-Support

And by googling a bit more it seems there are guys running Arch with kernel 4.12 on it https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/t...b-not-working/
(although there are some regressions it seems)

in 2008 my company (https://ExactCODE.com) contacted Nvidia for Linux embedded, and Linux phone project and such at the time, we got a one line reply:

From: "Bill Henry" <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:57:03 -0700

How is your Windows CE experience? We are not supporting Linux on Tegra.

Guess how much we have done with Nvidia since then? ;-)

Why are there even still Nvidia Linux fantrolls running around?

[starshipeleven]

Why are there even still Nvidia Linux fantrolls running around?

Because too much people (chip manufacturers included) still treat Linux as Windows. You can thank Ubuntu for that.

[wizard69]

Almost perfect if it wasnt for NVidia.

Seriously there are more restrictions and gotcha here than a reasonable oerson should need too tolerate.

When i say almost perfect what i mean is that it has a feature set suitable for many things id like to do with ARM based boards. One of those things id like to do is a video server which the board covers well. I guess i dont get the concept of a developers board, what we need are production boards as few these days design their own hardware.