Good news! Popular Nvidia hardware gets free upgrade that boosts its performance by up to 70% – but it’s not for gamers

Jetson Nano is Nvidia’s uber popular dev kit
Nvidia cut its price by half to $249 in a bid to attract more developers to its platform
It has also released a firmware that “unlocks” up to 70% performance for free

In a move which is likely to raise more than a few eyebrows, Nvidia has rolled out a free upgrade that significantly enhances the performance of its Jetson hardware line, making it “super”.

Aimed primarily at developers working on AI and robotics applications, the new software update delivers a staggering 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, marking a major 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 mysteriously somehow unlocked double the memory bandwidth, boosting it to 102GB/s on the Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit – all while retaining the original hardware specifications.

The upgrade not only enhances raw compute performance but also boosts generative AI capabilities by 70%, enabling developers to deploy sophisticated 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 cutting-edge AI development accessible to a wider audience, including hobbyists and students.

With 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 deployments.

ServeTheHome raises a valid question about this upgrade: “So somehow, in a 25W envelope, using the same hardware, we get double the memory bandwidth and more raw compute performance.”

The site adds, “Reasonable folks will ask if the hardware was capable of this performance in the first place, why not unlock it from the Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Launch in 2022 or the Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit Launch in 2023? Have these devices been out in the field with the hardware waiting for a firmware switch to unlock massive performance gains? It just feels strange. Still, it is awesome that we do not have to re-buy modules to get the new performance.”

Nvidia Jetson Orin upgrades