NVIDIA Jetson Orin Carrier Boards: Complete Guide & Overview
In this section, you will learn about the carrier boards currently available for the NVIDIA Jetson Orin System-on-Module (SoM).
The carrier board is the essential piece of hardware that provides all the physical interfaces required to make the Jetson Orin usable in real applications. While the SoM itself integrates the CPU, GPU, and memory, it cannot operate standalone. It connects to the carrier board through a 699-pin connector, which exposes critical I/O such as USB, HDMI/DisplayPort, PCIe, networking, camera inputs, and GPIOs. In practice, the carrier board transforms the Orin SoM into a fully functional embedded computer that can be evaluated, developed on, or deployed in production.
Many developers begin working with the Jetson Orin by using NVIDIA’s own developer kit. This kit provides a reference carrier board designed for evaluation, testing, and software development. Once a project matures and moves toward production, engineers typically design their own custom carrier board tailored to their hardware requirements, or they select a third-party board from NVIDIA’s ecosystem partners.
Currently, there are several carrier boards designed for the Jetson Orin AGX, each serving different purposes:
- NVIDIA Orin developer kit: the official carrier board from NVIDIA included in the Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit. It provides a comprehensive set of interfaces and serves as the baseline hardware for development. Figure 1 below shows the NVIDIA developer kit.
- Auvidea X230D: a compact carrier board that integrates heatsink, fan, and optional NVMe SSD storage, suitable for edge AI applications where cooling and fast storage are essential.
- Connect Tech Forge: a small-footprint commercial carrier board designed by Connect Tech, optimized for deployment scenarios where reliability and size constraints are critical.
By understanding the role of the carrier board and reviewing the options available, developers can select the best platform for prototyping and for scaling into production. In the following subsections, we provide detailed guides on each supported carrier board, including specifications, setup instructions, and usage recommendations.
