NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX - Carrier Boards
 | The NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX documentation from RidgeRun is presently being developed. |
In this section, you are going to learn about the carrier boards currently available for the Orin NX SoM.
The carrier board is the piece of hardware that provides the physical interfaces to the SoM. The Orin NX SoM itself contains the CPU, GPU, memory, and accelerators, but it relies on the carrier board to expose interfaces such as USB, Ethernet, HDMI/DisplayPort, PCIe, and camera connectors. The SoM connects to the carrier board using its 260-pin SODIMM edge connector, which establishes both the data and power interfaces.
Many customers begin their evaluation process with the developer kits provided by NVIDIA. These kits offer a reference carrier board designed to expose the most common interfaces and to simplify testing during the early stages of development. Once engineers confirm that the Orin NX meets their project requirements in terms of performance, power consumption, and I/O support, they usually move to the next stage: either designing a fully custom carrier board tailored to their product needs or choosing from the ecosystem of commercial carrier boards available in the market.
A key advantage of the Orin NX family is that the Jetson Orin NX SoM is pin compatible with the Jetson Xavier NX. This pin compatibility significantly reduces development time because many existing carrier boards designed for Xavier NX can also be used with Orin NX. This allows developers to migrate to the newer, more powerful Orin NX without redesigning their hardware from scratch. It also means that ecosystem partners and third-party vendors already offer a broad selection of compatible boards, covering applications in robotics, AIoT, computer vision, and industrial automation.
- NVIDIA developer kit is the official carrier board offered by NVIDIA as part of the Orin NX developer kit. It provides the standard set of interfaces, including multiple USB ports, Ethernet, HDMI/DP, M.2 slots for storage or wireless connectivity, and CSI camera connectors. Figure 1 shows NVIDIA's developer kit for the Orin NX:
In addition to NVIDIA’s own board, several hardware vendors such as Connect Tech, Auvidea, and Antmicro offer carrier boards optimized for different markets. Some focus on robotics and industrial environments with extended I/O and rugged connectors, while others are designed for multimedia or AI edge applications where multiple camera inputs, high-speed storage, or advanced connectivity are critical. This diversity of options makes it straightforward for developers to select a platform that matches their specific product requirements, while still relying on the same Orin NX SoM.