You can’t buy a phone, tablet, or game console with NVIDIA’s new Tegra K1 processor yet. But starting today you’ll be able to pre-order a dev kit featuring the new chip.

The NVIDIA Jetson TK1 DevKit is available for $192 in the US and Europe, which is a nod to the chip’s 192-core graphics processor.

nvidia jetson tk1

The devkit is basically a tiny computer-on-a-board featuring NVIDIA’s new processor as well as 2GB of RAM, 16GB of eMMC storage, and a range of other features including:

  • Half mini-PCIE slot
  • Gigabite Ethernet
  • SD card connector
  • HDMI port
  • Mic and Line jacks
  • 1 micro USB 2.0 port
  • 1 USB 3.0 port
  • SATA data port
  • 4MByte boot flash

There’s also an expansion port for UART, GPIO, and DP/LVDS signals, among other things.

The Jetson TK1  board features NVIDIA’s ARM Cortex-A15 4-Plus-1 quad-core processor with Kepler graphics and 192 NVIDIA CUDA cores.

NVIDIA’s board is aimed at developers and supports the CUDA 6.0 developer tool suite. The idea is to provide tools for app developers to create software that can take advantage of the Tegra K1’s features… and for hardware makers to take the platform for a spin when deciding which chip to use.

But the Jetson TK1 also happens to be the first device to ship with a Tegra K1 chip. For $192, it’s kind of tempting to pick one up for use as an Android-powered desktop PC or media center.

NVIDIA also plans to launch a separate Tegra K1 chip with an ARMv8 64-bit processor. There’s no word on whether there will be a different dev kit for that chip.

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13 replies on “NVIDIA Jetson TK1 is a $192 Tegra K1-powered dev kit”

  1. I am trying to boot with debian . I am successfully able to boot with debian but GUI is not up. Does anypne know hat is the problem ?

  2. Love all these ARM dev boards coming out.
    I currently have the $59 Odroid-U3 (2GB RAM quad-core) from Hardkernel. With 16GB eMMC, case and power supply, it was $132 with shipping from S. Korea to the US. Just a tiny bit smaller than a Raspberry Pi.

    I have Debian Jessie and XBMC on it for TV, Movies, Photos, Music and Web hooked up to my TV.
    Feels fast and the desktop experience feels as smooth as Linux on an x86 PC.

    Would love to see what this new Nvidia board can do too.

  3. One great thing about K1 is that it will practically be the same GPU (only downscaled) as the desktop GPUs of Nvidia. This means that proper X11 drivers and codecs will be available for desktop Linux builds.

    Can’t wait to see the 64bit version of K1. That may be the first, long-awaited “real-desktop-class” ARM processor (although I am fairly satisfied (desktop-wise) with the Exynos 5250 running my Sammy Chromebook)

  4. As much as I’d like to run a straight Linux distro on this and use it as a light desktop or even mini server, it’d probably be much more fun running Android. Then it could run lots of games (and XBMC). But I don’t see Android listed on the support page 🙁

  5. I’m clicking around the nvidia support pages, does the driver pack actually include a GPU and video acceleration driver? If so this just bypassed all the 3D issues linux on ARM usually has (Mali and whatnot have very little in the way of drivers) and went straight into my shopping cart

  6. add a bluray drive and a wifi card and you have a pretty serious HTPC (if there is ANYWAY to get aacs style playback ala Sony GTV gen1)

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