Jetson TK1

About this site
This is the official Wiki for embedded Tegra & the Jetson TK1 board, maintained by both the community and NVIDIA. Wiki pages for the other NVIDIA Jetson boards are available in the Jetson main page.

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 NVIDIA's first mobile processor to have the same advanced features & architecture as a modern desktop GPU while still using the low power draw of a mobile chip. Therefore Tegra K1 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
NVIDIA's embedded Tegra K1 SoC (CPU+GPU+ISP on a single processor) is available directly in chip form, or as various 3rd-party embedded modules. They typically come 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 (upto 326 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 (routed to SDMMC4)
 * 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 (routed to SDMMC3)
 * 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 (routed to UART4)
 * Audio: an ALC5639 Realtek HD Audio codec with Mic in and Line out jacks (routed to DAP2)
 * Ethernet: a RTL8111GS Realtek 10/100/1000Base-T Gigabit LAN port using PEX
 * 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 0.1" port for professional debugging
 * Power: a 12V DC barrel power jack and a 4-pin PC IDE power connector, using AS3722 PMIC
 * Fan: a fan-heatsink running on 12V (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 2mm-pitch 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.

Front panel connector:
 * Green - Power LED
 * Orange - HDD LED
 * Red - Power Button
 * Purple / Blue - Reset Button

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 (CUDA optimized NVIDIA Performance Primitives)
 * OpenCV4Tegra (NEON + GLSL + quad-core CPU optimizations)
 * VisionWorks

Buying Guide

 * NVIDIA TK1 chips are available through Jan 2024 via distributors worldwide.
 * The Jetson TK1 Developer Kit is EOL.
 * Various Ecosystem partners have TK1 development systems available.

Setting up a new board
To configure a new board, or factory reset an existing Jetson, visit the official Get Started On Jetson page, particularly to read the Quick Start guides (downloadable PDF) to "flash" your device (wipe it clean and install Linux onto it). And if you will want to do software development for your Jetson, such as to build CUDA code, you should install the JetPack (Jetson Development Package) as mentioned in the Quick Start Guides to install a graphical IDE with cross-compilation, debugging & visual profiling tools.

Get access to the entire eMMC storage space of Jetson
The eMMC that stores all the files in the Jetson TK1 has a capacity of 16GB, however some instructions or boards only use 8GB of the drive (or 12GB, see discussion) so you don't have to wait another 30 minutes during flashing. If you think you will want more disk space in your rootfs such as for installing toolkits or compiling large projects or storing videos, when you flash the Jetson (from a Linux desktop) you can modify the flash command to use the whole 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.

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.

Note: the micro-USB port on Jetson TK1 can be used as a second USB port if you use the supplied adapter.

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.

An important step before connecting the Jetson to Internet
It is really important to tell "apt" not to overwrite the file "libglx.so" if you upgrade the system. "libglx.so" is a specific file in NVIDIA's graphics driver that might get replaced by an incorrect version from Ubuntu that stops you from being able to boot into the graphical environment! So please execute this command on your Jetson before you connect it to Internet or perform an update: sudo apt-mark hold xserver-xorg-core Now you can allow Ubuntu to update itself automatically or you can run "sudo apt-get upgrade" without problems. You can get more information about this issue on the official development forum. Note: Is this only a problem for L4T Rel-19 only? It seems fixed in Rel-21.

Note on passwords
Jetson with L4T is a complete computer, capable of remote login. Based on Ubuntu, the user name "ubuntu" and password "ubuntu" are standardized. Everyone in the world will know this password. If you decide to make your Jetson visible over an unsecured network, be sure to change the password of "ubuntu" to avoid malicious logins. For example, click on the user settings, or run "passwd" in a shell terminal to set your new password.

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. Run this to install them: sudo apt-get install bash-completion command-not-found sudo apt-file update &>/dev/null sudo update-command-not-found &>/dev/null exit Note: now you need to log back in for it to start using bash-completion and command-not-found.

It is also highly recommended to 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.

For a simple colored shell prompt that also shows the error number from the previous command, you can also execute this or add it to the bottom of your ~/.bashrc file: PS1="\[\e[0;44m\]\u@\h: \w (\$?) \$\[\e[0m\] "

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 successful 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']"

More recommended Linux tips for a Jetson TK1
Some more tips (such as how to speed up SSH logins, login automatically, share your keyboard & mouse, etc, are in a forum discussion.

Shutting down Jetson TK1 safely
Just like any Linux computer, the recommended way to shut-down or turn off Jetson TK1 is to click Shutdown in the GUI or run this in a terminal, to ensure the filesystem will not be corrupt: sudo shutdown -h now

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

 * Official Jetson TK1 website.
 * Official Jetson TK1 software development page, including L4T and all the Linux kernel source changes.
 * System Info: Find out the hardware info & what is available on the Jetson TK1 such as disk space, RAM, and devices.
 * Cloning & Backup Save the Jetson's eMMC (system.img) via the flash port and restore it to other Jetson boards.
 * Trace32 / JTAG Debugging Attaching a professional debugger module for very low-level access to the Tegra.

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.
 * VisionWorks Installation: How to install the VisionWorks toolkit.
 * OpenCV Installation: How to install OpenCV, including building from source.
 * ArrayFire Installation: How to install ArrayFire for Tegra and getting started.
 * Kodi (XBMC) Installation: How to install XBMC Media Center such as for a green HTPC.
 * Plex Media Server Installation: How to install Plex Media Server such as for a green HTPC.
 * 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 Video Codec: Hardware-accelerated video encoder/decoder for H.264 and other multimedia formats.
 * cuDNN: GPU-accelerated Machine Learning & Deep Neural Network library.
 * JavaFX installation: How to install JavaFX for the Jetson TK1

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

 * Expansion board: Discusses a full function expansion board, designed by "http://dcac.taobao.com".
 * 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.
 * PWM: How to control the spped of motors & servos or LED brightness using Jetson TK1.
 * I2C: How to communicate between microcontrollers & devices using I2C on Jetson TK1.
 * Bluetooth: Use wireless Bluetooth devices such as keyboards, mice & speakers, or communicate to a smartphone or tablet.
 * Enclosures & Cases: Various cases that are available to protect a Jetson TK1.
 * Audio: Issues related to audio input or output, such as microphones or speakers.
 * RTC: Add battery backup RTC and support it using the Grinch Custom Kernel.

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

Add you project based on Jetson TK1 to our Hackster community

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.
 * Fedora Linux: install Fedora on Jetson TK1 plus a minimal XFCE desktop.
 * openSUSE Linux: install openSUSE on Jetson TK1 plus a minimal XFCE desktop.
 * openSUSE Linux from SD or SATA: run openSUSE directly from an SD-card or SATA without modifying the eMMC storage.
 * Debian: Debian has installer and kernel support for the Jetson TK1 and provides a u-boot binary.
 * Arch Linux: install Arch Linux on Jetson TK1 for a minimal Linux system.
 * Gentoo Linux from SD: run Gentoo directly on an SD-card without modifying the contents of the eMMC storage.
 * Gentoo Linux: run Gentoo Linux (from eMMC) instead of Ubuntu Linux.
 * Busybox: create a very minimal root filesystem with Busybox.
 * Android lollipop: Android Lollipop port for Jetson TK1, including support from e-Con Systems.
 * Android: The user "lucasdai" is working on a community-supported version of Android on Jetson TK1.
 * Slackware ARM Project: Running custom mainline kernel with Slackware.
 * Example of Yocto based distro: Another Yocto-based distro for Jetson TK1.
 * AGL distro 5.0 for jetson TK1: Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) for Jetson TK1.
 * 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.

Jetson TK1 and Tegra K1 Hardware Documents
The official Jetson TK1 Hardware Design and Development page contains the open-source hardware documents, allowing you to inspect your Jetson board or even design your own custom board based on Tegra K1 or Jetson TK1, including:
 * Jetson TK1 DevKit Specification
 * Jetson TK1 Schematics
 * Jetson TK1 PCB Board Files (Gerbers)
 * Jetson TK1 2D CAD file with layers (.DXF)
 * Jetson TK1 Bill of Materials (BOM)
 * Tegra K1 SOC Technical Reference Manual (TRM)
 * Tegra K1 Embedded Platform Design Guide
 * Tegra K1 Memory Approved Vendor List
 * Jetson TK1 Pin Mux
 * Jetson TK1 Allegro Design File
 * Jetson TK1 PCB Stack Up Details
 * Jetson TK1 ValorODB++ Database
 * Jetson TK1 Datasheet Orcad Schematics
 * Jetson TK1 Board Orcad Schematics
 * Jetson TK1 PCB Assembly Drawing
 * Jetson TK1 RS274x Gerber Data
 * Jetson TK1 Autocad DXF Format Design File
 * Jetson TK1 PCB Mentor PADS ASCII Format Layout

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). NVIDIA has released many newer Tegra and Xavier dev boards and SOCs through the Jetson family. See the Jetson main Wiki for other NVIDIA boards that superceded the original Jetson TK1.

3rd-party embedded Tegra K1 boards
There are several embedded dev boards featuring a Tegra K1, such as NVIDIA's Jetson TK1 as well as several other boards:
 * NVIDIA Jetson TK1, NVIDIA's official dev board for Tegra K1. It is relatively large and includes many accessory ports and is officially supported, thus is the recommended board for most users.
 * eSOMTK1 - e-con systems' compact form factor Computer on Module is based on nVIDIA® Tegra® K1 CPU. Suitable for Deep Learning & Imaging Applications.
 * Propus - e- con Systems’ eSOMTK1 based compact form factor nVIDIA® Tegra® K1 development board.
 * Colorado Engineering TK1-SOM, a small American Tegra K1 board with many accessories soon to include a CSI MIPI camera module.
 * EmbSom Sparkle TK1-SOM, a small Taiwanese Tegra K1 board.
 * Avionic Design Tegra K1 COM, a small German Tegra K1 module that is more suited to mass-production.
 * Abaco Systems mCOM10-K1 Small Tegra K1 COMExpress Type10 module..
 * DJI Manifold, an enclosed drone / flight computer with similar size as Jetson TK1 but designed specifically for adding to the DJI Matrice 100 quadcopter. (Broken Link)
 * Toradex Apalis TK1 is a small form-factor System on Module, ideal for building high-end embedded products in the areas of vision and computing.

This Wiki site is designed for Jetson TK1, but almost everything that applies to Jetson TK1 will also apply to the 3rd party dev boards, so this site is useful for any Tegra K1 based dev board.

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

Jetson & Embedded Tegra Communities

 * Jetson community on Hackster.io
 * Jetson community on Google+
 * Official Jetson blog on Google+
 * Official Jetson discussion forum

Emulators for developing with Jetson TK1

 * Emulators: which Windows, OSX, Linux or SteamOS products with a powerful Nvidia GPU are economic and suitable for developing Jetson software?

Books
Explore your Jetson TK1 (e-book)

The JetPack Cookbook (proposed)

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.
 * Jetson main Wiki lists the other NVIDIA Jetson dev boards that came our after Jetson TK1, including the Xavier series of boards.