Promo Nvidia Igx Platform New 6331cf2d57b9f

Motherboard Brings AI and SmartNIC Performance to the Industrial Edge

Sept. 26, 2022

NVIDIA’s IGX Orin motherboard, featuring a Jetson AGX Orin module, delivers artificial-intelligence and SmartNIC capability to industrial applications.

William G. Wong

Related To: Electronic Design

Check out more coverage from GTC Fall 2022. This is also part of the TechXchange: Smart and Secure Storage

What you’ll learn

What is the IGX Orin platform?
Where will the IGX Orin motherboard be used?

The Jetson AGX Orin module developed by NVIDIA requires a carrier board to operate. This has typically been a compact motherboard designed for embedded systems. They’re available from a variety of vendors, and the backward compatibility with earlier Jetson AGX platforms enables these boards to host the latest incarnation.

The NVIDIA IGX Orin platform is a standard-size motherboard, allowing it to fit into standard PC cases or in applications designed around this standard form factor. The motherboard comes with a Jetson AGX Orin module; thus, it can host a range of machine-learning applications based on the company’s software libraries and framework stacks (see figure). The module can deliver 275 TOPS of AI performance.

The IGX Orin motherboard is designed to host secure, high-performance, machine-learning software.

Because the system is designed for security and performance, it can be used in applications such as industrial control and medical applications, where AI and security are two top priorities for developers.

The system also is built for high network throughput by including NVIDIA’s ConnectX-7 SmartNIC. It includes accelerated switch and packet processing technology that reduce CPU overhead. RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) is part of that support, providing remote direct-memory access (RDMA) services for latency-sensitive applications.

Further support comes from the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) and its own secure boot with in-hardware root of trust. This is the same technology used on the company’s PCI Express SmartNIC cards.

The IGX features a board management controller (BMC) and matching software stack for remote system management. It handles software updates, while the secure-boot controller provides an external root of trust. The dedicated safety monitor supports a real-time operating system (RTOS) with built-in safety monitoring software.

This isn’t a reference platform but rather a long-term platform with a guaranteed 10-year support for the IGX software stack. This includes a Linux board-support package with documentation relating to industrial and medical certification.

Check out more coverage from GTC Fall 2022. This is also part of the TechXchange: Smart and Secure Storage

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.