Feasibility of microSD Express (PCIe/NVMe) Support on Jetson TX2 NX

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson TX2
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Hi @JerryChang @ShaneCCC ,

I am working with the Jetson TX2 NX platform and had a forward-looking hardware architecture question regarding storage interfaces.

I would like to understand whether it is technically feasible to replace or repurpose the existing microSD card interface with a microSD Express card reader that operates over PCIe/NVMe, instead of the traditional SDMMC/SDIO interface.

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hello sanu.m19,

you may refer to developer guide, Flashing to an NVMe Drive.

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Hi @JerryChang

Thanks for the pointer.

Just to clarify our use case: we are not planning to boot from the microSD Express / NVMe device. The system will continue to boot from eMMC as usual.
The microSD Express card is intended only as a storage device (for data, logs, camera streams, etc.).

Given this, could you please confirm whether the Jetson TX2 NX hardware and BSP support using a PCIe/NVMe-based storage device (via a microSD Express card reader) purely as a non-boot storage interface, instead of the standard SDMMC microSD interface?

Any guidance on hardware or driver limitations would be helpful.

Thanks,
Sanu

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hello sanu.m19,

please see-also Jetson TX2 NX Interface Comparison and Migration for reference,
just note that, the PCIe lane over the M.2 slot on TX2-NX has only 2 lanes,
besides, we’ve tested NVMe PCIe SSD (i.e. Transcend SM2263EN), and it worked fine on TX2 NX developer kit.

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micro SD express is just like a form factor connector to Jetson. It is still a PCIe interface to Jetson.

We don’t provide any existing solution to convert that signal between NVMe SSD to microSD Express. That depends on 3rdparty solution that you should reach out some vendor for help first.

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Hi @WayneWWW

We are designing a custom carrier board. Our current design supports only an SD card; however, to improve performance, we are planning to interface a microSD Express (uSD Express) card using a PCIe interface. Could you please confirm whether the TX2 NX supports a uSD Express card via the PCIe interface?

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I think I already answered that.

We only provide the PCIe interface. Converting that signal to other kind of protocol (e.g. uSD Express) is not what we support… you may need 3rdparty solution to convert that signal.

For example, if you want to use a USB device on our PCIe interface, you may need to get a USB-PCIe adapter to do that. Similar case to uSD Express…

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