I am currently working with JetPack 6.x on Jetson Orin NX, AGX, and Nano devices, using Ubuntu 22.04 in a soft real-time system application focused on video analytics, specifically leveraging DeepStream plugins. I am considering switching to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLE) 15 SP6.
However, I found that SLE 15 SP6 does not include GPU drivers for NVIDIA Jetson, NVIDIA IGX, or NVIDIA DRIVE platforms. Is it possible to manually install the necessary GPU drivers on this distribution? If not, are there any alternative methods or workarounds to enable GPU acceleration on SLE 15 SP6?
Additionally, I would appreciate your thoughts on whether SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a suitable choice for video analytics and DeepStream applications on Jetson devices?
Jetsons have an integrated GPU (iGPU) which is directly connected to the memory controller. Most systems you know about use a discrete GPU (dGPU) which is connected via the PCI bus. The two drivers are incompatible. There is an arm64 GPU driver, but that driver is intended for PCI bus in some data warehouse type systems (which means this also won’t work for the iGPU of a Jetson). I think that in the past (perhaps not so on JP6, but probably still??) that people who have tried to use both simultaneously found conflicts and more or less ended up flashing their systems again.
The IGX holoscan platform is likely not what you want as it has a much higher price and is physically much larger, but it is an example of a beastly powerful machine which can use the A6000 or A6000 Ada. In this case the drivers do not run simultaneously, one chooses whether to run one with the PCIe A6000 or the iGPU, but I think not both simultaneously. Drive is more specialized compared to IGX. If you can afford it, and if the larger size and power requirements work for you, then you might consider the IGX holoscan.