Jetson TK1

About this site
This is the official Wiki for embedded Tegra & the Jetson TK1 board, maintained by both the community and NVIDIA.

The other embedded Tegra community sites with official NVIDIA support are:
 * The forum for discussing embedded Tegra & Jetson TK1 issues with the community & NVIDIA.
 * The blog to stay updated with the latest news & plans for embedded Tegra & Jetson TK1 from NVIDIA.

About Tegra K1
Tegra K1 is the world's first chip to have the same advanced features & architecture as a modern desktop GPU while still using the low power draw of a mobile chip! The Jetson TK1 board therefore allows embedded devices to use the exact same CUDA code that would also run on a desktop GPU (used by over 100,000 developers), with similar levels of GPU-accelerated performance as a desktop!

About Jetson TK1
Jetson TK1 is NVIDIA's embedded Linux development platform featuring a Tegra K1 SOC (CPU+GPU+ISP in a single chip), selling for $192 USD ($1 per CUDA core!). Jetson TK1 comes pre-installed with Linux4Tegra OS (basically Ubuntu 14.04 with pre-configured drivers). There is also some official support for running other distributions using the mainline kernel, discussed further in the Distributions and Mainline kernel sections below.

Besides the quad-core 2.3GHz ARM Cortex-A15 CPU and the revolutionary Tegra K1 GPU, the Jetson TK1 board includes similar features as a Raspberry Pi but also some PC-oriented features such as SATA, mini-PCIe and a fan to allow continuous operation under heavy workloads:

Hardware Features

 * Dimensions: 5" x 5" (127mm x 127mm) board
 * Tegra K1 SOC (CPU+GPU+ISP in a single chip, with typical power consumption between 1 to 5 Watts):
 * GPU: NVIDIA Kepler "GK20a" GPU with 192 SM3.2 CUDA cores (over 300 GFLOPS!)
 * CPU: NVIDIA "4-Plus-1" 2.32GHz ARM quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU with Cortex-A15 battery-saving shadow-core
 * DRAM: 2GB DDR3L 933MHz EMC x16 using 64-bit data width
 * Storage: 16GB fast eMMC 4.51
 * ROM: 4MB SPI boot flash
 * mini-PCIe: a half-height single-lane PEX slot (such as for Wifi, SSD RAID, FireWire or Ethernet addon cards)
 * SD/MMC card: a full-size slot
 * USB 3.0: a full-size Type-A female socket
 * USB 2.0: a micro-AB female socket (for connecting to a PC, but can also be used as a spare USB 2.0 port using a micro-B male to female Type-A adapter that is sometimes included)
 * HDMI: a full-size port
 * RS232: a full-size DB9 serial port
 * Audio: a ALC5639 Realtek HD Audio codec with Mic in and Line out jacks
 * Ethernet: a RTL8111GS Realtek 10/100/1000Base-T Gigabit LAN port
 * SATA: a full-size port that supports 2.5" and 3.5" disks, but is not hot-pluggable. (Turn off the power before plugging in SATA disk drives)
 * JTAG: a 2x10-pin port for debugging
 * Power: a 12V DC barrel power jack, plus a 4-pin PC IDE power connector
 * Fan: a fan-heatsink running on 5V (to allow safely running intense workloads continuously, but can usually be replaced by a heat-spreader or heatsink)

The following signals are available through the 125-pin expansion port:
 * Camera ports: 2 fast CSI-2 MIPI camera ports (one 4-lane and one 1-lane)
 * LCD port: LVDS and eDP Display Panel
 * Touchscreen ports: Touch SPI 1 x 4-lane + 1 x 1-lane CSI-2
 * UART
 * HSIC
 * I2C: 3 ports
 * GPIO: 7 x GPIO pins (1.8V). Camera CSI pins can also be used for extra GPIO if you don't use both cameras.

Hardware-accelerated APIs supported:
 * CUDA 6.0 (SM3.2, roughly the same as desktop SM3.5)
 * OpenGL 4.4
 * OpenGL ES 3.1
 * OpenMAX IL multimedia codec including H.264, VC-1 and VP8 through Gstreamer
 * NPP
 * OpenCV4Tegra (NEON & GLSL & quad-core optimizations)
 * VisionWorks

Buying Guide
Where can I get one and for how much?
 * Visit the NVIDIA store then choose a distributor in USA, or click on "International Orders" to see other countries it is available from including UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, China, Singapore, and Australia.
 * Jetson TK1 costs $192 ($1 per CUDA core!) in USA.
 * The package includes a power supply (with a detachable US mains cord), a USB micro-B cable for connecting it to a PC, and usually a USB micro-B to female USB-A adapter allowing you to have 2 regular USB ports.

Basic setup steps to access the board and access internet
Whether you want to sew your embedded Tegra into a backpack or put it in a robot or simply use it as an ultra powerful media center, the first thing you should do with a new Jetson TK1 board is attach it to a HDMI monitor & keyboard & mouse to make sure it works and get familiar with it for a few minutes. The device can be accessed in 2 possible ways, depending on whether you want to plug a keyboard & mouse & monitor directly into the Jetson TK1 board or you want to plug an Ethernet cable between your device and a PC or laptop or router and access it through a network:

Direct access to a Jetson board using its own keyboard & mouse & monitor
The Jetson TK1 Quick Start Guide (included as a booklet with your Jetson TK1) shows how to use the Jetson TK1 board as a mini standalone computer. Basically, you plug in a HDMI monitor or TV, plug a keyboard into the USB3.0 port, plug a mouse into the included micro-B to female USB adapter and plug that into the micro-B USB2.0 port on the board. Then plug the 12V power supply in, press the small POWER button, then watch it boot up into Linux4Tegra (Ubuntu 14.04 with some drivers pre-configured). When it asks for the password for user "ubuntu", just type "ubuntu" to log in. If you have an Ethernet router then simply plug an Ethernet cable from the board into your router (or plug in a USB Wifi dongle) to have internet access, and you are ready.

Remote access to a Jetson board through the Ethernet port
To access the board remotely through a local network from a PC or laptop, follow the Remote Access instructions so you can control the device from the keyboard & mouse & monitor on your PC or laptop and share your desktop's Wifi or Ethernet internet access to the attached device.

Recommended first steps now that your board has internet access
Open a command-line terminal to perform some initial operations. If you are using the Jetson TK1's graphical environment then click on the top-left icon in Ubuntu Unity and type "terminal" to open a command shell, or if you have remote access to the device through a network then open an SSH command shell into your device from your desktop such as by running "ssh ubuntu@tegra-ubuntu". Now you are ready for initial configuration.

Add the Universe package repositories, since you will often need packages from Universe for code development: sudo apt-add-repository universe sudo apt-get update

If you will use the shell command-line a lot
Install "bash-completion" (it allows you to hit the "Tab" key to auto-complete your shell commands) and "command-not-found" (it shows which package you probably need to install if you run an unavailable command). These 2 tools are extremely useful when using the commandline, but were not installed by default in Ubuntu 14.04. Simply run this: sudo apt-get install bash-completion command-not-found exit Note: now you need to log back in for it to start using bash-completion and command-not-found.

You probably should also change the shell prompt (by adjusting "PS1" in the ".bashrc" file in your home directory) to be more useful, such as getting the shell prompt to have a different color than regular commands, and make it obvious if a command returned with an error. There are thousands of custom .bashrc configurations on the web, including Shervin's that provides a different colored shell prompt depending on whether a command was succesful or returned an error.

If you will use the graphical environment (Unity) a lot
You might want to try some suggestions at "http://itsfoss.com/things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu-14-04/" or similar, such as to turn off the desktop shopping suggestions that are enabled by default in Ubuntu 14.04 (despite the spyware concerns discussed by huge numbers of people) by running this: gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses disabled-scopes "['more_suggestions-amazon.scope', \    'more_suggestions-u1ms.scope', 'more_suggestions-populartracks.scope', 'music-musicstore.scope', \     'more_suggestions-ebay.scope', 'more_suggestions-ubuntushop.scope', 'more_suggestions-skimlinks.scope']"

If you need more disk space on the eMMC
The eMMC on the Jetson has a capacity of 16GB, however some instructions or boards default to only using 8GB of the drive (or 12GB, see discussion). If you require more disk space in your rootfs such as for installing toolkits or compiling large projects, you can flash the Jetson (from a Linux desktop) to have a larger filesystem (note that this will erase all data on the Jetson TK1, and it takes roughly 1 hour to flash the whole eMMC!):

[user@host Linux_for_Tegra]$ sudo ./flash.sh -S 14580MiB jetson-tk1 mmcblk0p1 ... sending file: system.img / 15032385536/15032385536 bytes sent system.img sent successfully ... Create, format and download took 2791 Secs Time taken for flashing 2792 Secs

The maximum value of the  flag that works successfully is 14580MiB. Greater values (like 16GiB) are beyond the capacity of the eMMC when the other system-required partitions are included.

Tutorials for developing with Jetson TK1
The following are tutorial projects for hardware and/or software development. They show the easiest way to do a certain task, while the Reference Information section below has more detailed pages. If you have something useful to contribute about Jetson TK1 or embedded Tegra then please do so.

General Topics

 * JetsonTK1 Support Page: Includes a lot of the open-source hardware documents, such as the mechanical drawings, Bill of Materials (BOM), electrical circuit schematics, CAD files, Jetson TK1 module spec, Tegra K1 SOC Technical Reference Manual (TRM), etc.
 * System Info: Find out the hardware info & what is available on the Jetson TK1 such as disk space, RAM, and devices.

Networking Topics

 * Wifi & Ethernet Adapters: Discusses which Wifi or Ethernet cards have been tested on Jetson TK1.
 * Remote Access: Control the device from your PC or laptop, and share your desktop's Wifi or Ethernet internet access to the attached device.

Software Topics

 * CUDA Installation: How to install the CUDA toolkit.
 * OpenCV Installation: How to install OpenCV, including building from source.
 * ArrayFire Installation: How to install ArrayFire for Tegra and getting started.
 * Libraries: Libraries that have been tested on Jetson TK1.
 * Web Browsers: How to get web browsers working, including Flash for watching youtube videos in Chromium.
 * H.264 Codec: Hardware-accelerated video encoder/decoder for H.264 and other multimedia formats.

Performance and Power Topics

 * Performance: How to maximize or minimize CPU & GPU clocks for different performance & power draw.
 * Power Management: Electrical power related issues, such as powering the board from a battery or seeing how much power is drawn.
 * Thermal: How to replace the fan with a heat-spreader or heatsink, and measure the board's temperatures.
 * Graphics Performance: Discusses graphics performance of the Tegra TK1 on the board, including comparison with competing solutions.
 * Computer Vision Performance & Power Draw: Describes the different Tegra hardware optimizations in OpenCV, and shows power & perf measurements for many computer vision applications in OpenCV, CUDA and VisionWorks.

Hardware Expansion Topics

 * Cameras & Webcams: Discusses USB cameras and CSI cameras, stereo cameras and Time-Of-Flight 3D depth cameras.
 * mini-PCIe Add-on Cards: Shows some possible add-on cards that can be used in the mini-PCIe port.
 * GPIO: How to control digital output pins and read input data pins on Jetson TK1.
 * I2C: How to communicate between microcontrollers & devices using I2C on Jetson TK1.
 * Enclosures & Cases: Various cases that are available to protect a Jetson TK1.

Projects using Jetson TK1
The following are descriptions, photos and/or videos of projects featuring Jetson TK1. Feel free to add your own!

Linux distributions running on Tegra
Jetson TK1 comes preloaded with NVIDIA's Linux4Tegra (L4T) distribution. However it is possible to install other distributions on a Tegra device:


 * Linux4Tegra (L4T) distribution: basically Ubuntu 14.04 with pre-configured drivers for bootloader, kernel, OpenGL, X.Org, Multimedia, etc.
 * Gentoo Linux: run Gentoo directly on an SD-card without modifying the contents of the eMMC storage. (Will soon support many other Linux distros such as Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, etc!)
 * Android: Android is not officially supported on Jetson TK1 by NVIDIA, but perhaps some users will eventually post instructions to get it working.
 * others?

Upstream/mainline OS & kernel system software on Tegra
NVIDIA's Tegra SoCs are well supported by mainline OSS such as Linux and U-Boot. This section contains an index of topics related to running mainline software on Tegra.


 * U-Boot.
 * Linux kernel.
 * Nouveau driver.
 * Issues specific to running mainline Linux on the Jetson TK1 board.
 * Gentoo Linux: run Gentoo directly on an SD-card without modifying the contents of the eMMC storage.

Other embedded Tegra boards created by NVIDIA
Jetson TK1 was the first embedded board that NVIDIA created for the general public, but there have also been some other Tegra boards, including the automotive-grade Tegra-K1 based Visual Compute Module and the Jetson Pro development platform, both for the automotive industry (requires an NDA and large sales figures, etc).

Other SOCs created by NVIDIA
SOCs: NVIDIA made several previous generations of Tegra SOCs for the mobile, automotive and MP3 player industries.

Other links
Resources is a list of links to Tegra-related documentation and code outside of this wiki, such as TRMs and mainline kernel links.

Google+