Nvidia Jetson Nano support? Any chances or Progress?

Lama · July 26, 2019 at 6:53 PM

I've been scanning various links on Jetson Nano and I could find few interesting things here and there but I'm very much hoping for LibreELEC to be ported on this device

These are my finds:

Some DEV talks

Nvidia Jetson Nano, superfast Kodi device?

Run Jetson from USB

Jetson Nano - Run on USB Drive - JetsonHacks

Xbuntu-core XFCE4 18.04.2 Custom image

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/…e-jetson-nano-/

Armbian for Jetson Nano

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/…or-jetson-nano/

.NET Core3 related

Jetson Nano - A quick start with .NET Core 3

Android on Jetson

[ROM][UNOFFICIAL][8.1] switchroot LineageOS … | Nintendo Switch

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/…ndroid-on-nano/

WiFi and Bluetooth related

Jetson Nano + Intel Wifi and Bluetooth - JetsonHacks

Metal case and parts related

jetson nano – Geekworm

fl0w · December 13, 2020 at 12:56 PM

+1

Kodi Matrix works well using Docker on Jetson Nano: Docker Hub

Having a LibreELEC image released would give a perfect low power HTPC solution for low cost

**chewitt** · December 13, 2020 at 6:35 PM Official Post

Nobody on staff has Jetson boards so it would need to be a community created effort.

**CvH** · December 13, 2020 at 7:01 PM Official Post

Afaik there is no proper gpu driver available for the Jetson just some closed source binary blob that don't support the standards.

Hedda · June 15, 2021 at 11:20 AM

Have any LibreELEC developers started to look at the newer Nvidia Jetson Nano developer kits / Nvidia Jetson Nano development boards?

The first inexpensive Nvidia Jetson Nano Developer Kit was released just last year and the latest Nvidia Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit now only cost about $54 (US), while the original 4GB version of Nvidia Jetson Nano Developer Kit today looks to cost about the double at $99 (US).

Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit | NVIDIA Developer

Getting Started with Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit | NVIDIA Developer

Community member hashtag on Kodi forum (aliubimov on GitHub) has been working on a Kodi branch with video player patches for NVDEC hardware acceleration via V4L2 on newer Nvidia Tegra like the Jetson Nano series.

Nvidia Jetson Nano, superfast Kodi device?

Commits · aliubimov/xbmc · GitHub

Docker Hub

Do you think that there be interest in LibreELEC support for Nvidia Jetson Nano Dev Kit board (Nvidia Tegra SBC) if those patches are mainlined?

As I understand, Nvidia Jetson Nano (and Nvidia Jetson TX1) boards are basically single-board computers for Linux based on a similar SoC with same type of processor and GPU to NVIDIA Tegra X1 used in Nvidia SHIELD TV / Nvidia SHIELD TV Pro and Nintendo Switch / Nintendo Switch Lite.

Tegra - Wikipedia

Nvidia Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit specification does list 4K @ 60 H.264/H.265 video decode support and HDMI 2.0 output.

**Klojum** · June 15, 2021 at 11:56 AM Official Post

Quote from Hedda

Have any LibreELEC developers started to look at the newer Nvidia Jetson Nano developer kits / Nvidia Jetson Nano development boards?

Not LibreELEC, but some people on the Kodi forum are busy with it, off and on: Nvidia Jetson Nano, superfast Kodi device?

**chewitt** · June 16, 2021 at 7:03 AM Official Post

Last time we looked the Tegra GPU drivers needed X11 to run, which does not align with the V4L2 oriented technical direction LE is persuing for all devices, so there is little interest in trying to support the boards.

Hedda · June 16, 2021 at 10:29 AM

Quote from chewitt

Last time we looked the Tegra GPU drivers needed X11 to run, which does not align with the V4L2 oriented technical direction LE is persuing for all devices, so there is little interest in trying to support the boards.

aliubimov on GitHub ("hashtag" on Kodi forums) has been working on NVDEC and V4L2 support for Jetson Nano, but yes he currently use X11

Commits · aliubimov/xbmc · GitHub

Not sure but it sounds as if could use NVIDIA V4L2 Video Decoder so not sure that X11 is a still requirement from Nvidia any longer?

Jetson Linux API Reference: V4L2 NV Extensions API

Jetson Linux API Reference: V4L2 Video Decoder

Jetson Nano and Jetson TX1 Package Manifest list "libnvgbm.so" as "Library for Generic Buffer Management (GBM) implementation":

Tegra Linux Driver

It does dounds as if you could enable Weston (Wayland) Windowing System with libnvgbm.so gbm (Generic Buffer Manager)?

Tegra Linux Driver

Nvidia docs do mention that libnvgbm.so is still considered experimental and that there are limits with multi-planar dma-buf formats.

**chewitt** · June 16, 2021 at 1:41 PM Official Post

There was some traffic on the mesa mailing list in the last couple of months about alternative GBM back-ends, which is basically about nVidia partially conceeding they aren't going to win the GBM vs. EGL Streams discussion and tweaking things on their side to reduce the differences, combined with compromise on the mesa side to allow alternatives to current libgbm; which isn't so objectionable now the EGL Streams "GBM" shim makes the differences relatively minor.

This basically allows Tegra DRM drivers to plug into mesa's userspace rendering infra which is well proven and widely supported; the shift from X11 is gathering momentum and Wayland needs mesa. Tegra V4L2 accelerated decoding is then the (non-trivial) missing link. If V4L2 compliant DRM/ffmpeg drivers are written (compliant to kernel V4L2, not some proprietary nVidia-ised interpretation) Kodi should require no changes to support Tegra boards. That's the theory anyway

hashtag · June 16, 2021 at 5:30 PM

Hi, I like your way of thinking. And I think it is right way of moving forward. I have a board and most of the code for it, only change that I have to do, is to integrate it with GBM. I'll find some time to give it a shot.

hashtag · July 20, 2021 at 3:51 PM

Quote from chewitt

This basically allows Tegra DRM drivers to plug into mesa's userspace rendering infra which is well proven and widely supported; the shift from X11 is gathering momentum and Wayland needs mesa. Tegra V4L2 accelerated decoding is then the (non-trivial) missing link. If V4L2 compliant DRM/ffmpeg drivers are written (compliant to kernel V4L2, not some proprietary nVidia-ised interpretation) Kodi should require no changes to support Tegra boards. That's the theory anyway

All right. I did some research of best way to approach this. As CvH mentioned, NVidia Decoder seems to be encoded in firmware for SoC and data passed via NVidia specific system calls via nvhost bus.

I am not Kernel developer, correct me if I wrong. The way I see it might work, is to create wrapper driver that is V4L2 compliant.

Last option would be to make a change to FFMPEG to support NVidia Decoder and redistribute it as patch to image. FFMPEG community isn't very excited about having NVidia-ish V4L2 and basically consider it madness to implement

**chewitt** · July 23, 2021 at 10:55 AM Official Post

Wrappers aren't the right approach because the level of optimisation required for functional 4K pipelines on ARM hardware is high and you'll always end up needing to write efficient native drivers. You can bodge 1080p, but RAM speed and bandwidth become big factors with 4K. The tertiary challenge with V4L2 is that it's all super new and still in a lot of flux; we're still some way from making a serious effort to upstream our current working code to ffmpeg because lots of things are still being experimented on.