Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial adds ruggedization and FuSa cores

Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial adds ruggedization and FuSa cores

Jun 15, 2021 — by Eric Brown

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[Updated: 7PM] — Nvidia has launched a “Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial” module that adds to the original design with dual Cortex-R5 functional safety (FuSa) cores, 32GB ECC RAM, 64GB eMMC, -40 to 85°C support, and shock and vibration resistance.

Nvidia has opened $1,449 pre-orders for a more rugged version of its Jetson AGX Xavier module, the most powerful of its AI-enabled Jetson modules. Due to ship in July, the Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial offers additional ruggedization protections, ECC RAM, and a functional safety (FuSa) block based on a pair of Cortex-R5 cores. The Linux-driven module supports rugged intelligent video analytics, optical inspection, robotics, computer vision, autonomy and AI applications.

The Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial is pin-, software- and form-factor compatible with the existing Jetson AGX Xavier module, which launched at $1,099 but now sells for $999. Like the original, the Industrial model features 8x ARMv8.2 cores and a 512-core Nvidia Volta GPU with 64 tensor cores with 2x Nvidia Deep Learning Accelerator (NVDLA) engines and 2x 7-way VLIW vision accelerators.

Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial
(click image to enlarge)

AI performance is listed at 30 TOPS. The original AGX Xavier was announced with the same rating but is now listed at 32 TOPS. The module supports the same CUDA-X accelerated computing stack, JetPack SDK, and Ubuntu-based BSP as the other Jetson modules.

The 100 x 87mm module is available with 64GB eMMC 5.1, up from 32GB. The Industrial model has the same 32GB 256-bit LPDDR4x, but it switches to ECC RAM with error correction codes, single error correction, double error detection, and parity protection. The combination “delivers internal RAM resilience, address and data bus error detection and correction and IP resiliency,” says Nvidia.

The chief architectural difference from the original is the addition of the Safety Cluster Engine (SCE), which is built around dual Cortex-R5 cores deployed in lockstep. Combined with the ECC functions and safety code, the FuSa block can be used for integrated fault-detection mechanisms and lock-step subsystems. The “always on” SCE enables built-in-system test and can be used for safety and error correction functions.

Unlike the similar FuSa enabled Intel Safety Island technology within the FE variants of Elkhart Lake Atom x-6000 and the GRE variants of 11th Gen Tiger Lake, no FuSa compliances are listed. Intel claims IEC 61508-2:2010 (SIL2) and ISO 13849-1 Cat 3 PL = d compliance.

Xilinx just announced a dual -A72, FPGA and AI enabled Versal AI Edge SoC that offers dual Cortex-R5F cores to support FuSa standards such as IEC 61508. The SoC is also claimed to offer 4x the AI performance-per-watt of AGX Xavier.

Ruggedization features

The Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial supports a fully industrial -40 to 85°C operating range compared to -25 to 80°C on the original. [Update: After the initial publication of the report, an Nvidia rep informed us that Nvidia measures the maximum temperature at the Thermal Transfer Plate (TTP) as opposed to the common practice of listing the junction temperature (Tj).]

The Industrial module adds shock resistance rated at 50G half sine 11ms and vibration resistance at 10-500 Hz, 5G random/sinusoidal. Operating lifetime support has doubled to 10 years.

The module retains the 699 I/O pins and supports the same I/O, including support for up to 6x cameras via 16 MIPI-CSI lanes and 3x up to 4K60 DP/eDP/HDMI. Other I/O similarly includes GbE, UFS, 8x PCIe Gen4, 3x USB 3.1, and more.

Power is listed at 20W/40W instead of 10W/15W/30W. Security features include hardware-verified secure boot, hardware-accelerated cryptography, and support for encrypted storage and memory.

Further information

The Jetson AGX Xavier Industrial module is available for pre-order at $1,449 and will ship in late July. More information may be found in Nvidia’s Jetson AGX Xavier product page (halfway down the page) and Jetson shopping page.