In our testing, we found 6 CPU cores can all be running at 1.9GHz by conducting the following Linux command:
for i in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq; do echo 1907200 > $i; done
And the performance benchmark SW shows significantly better CPU performance after increasing the CPU clocks from 1.4GHz to 1.9GHz.
In the post below, it says “we cannot guarantee the behavior and quality of NX then”.
Based on the results of nVIDIA’s internal evaluation, is it safe for customers to keep the frequency of all 6 CPU cores running at 1.9GHz for commercial product launch? Is the 1-year warranty still valid for NX SOM if 1.9GHz is used for all 6 CPU cores in commercial SW?
You can set all CPU cores at 1.9HGz for your use case, provided you make the appropriate tradeoffs with other clocks and system level thermal design. The Jetson Power Estimator tool can help get you started adjusting clocks and getting power estimates before application development, and then you’ll refine as you go along. The Jetson Xavier NX Thermal Design Guide provides necessary overall guidance.
Thank you for providing the link of Power Estimator tool and suggestions here! This tool is very helpful. We will adjust other clocks when CPU freq is 1.9GHz.
@kayccc
I tried the Jetson Power Estimator tool last year to check allowed CPU and GPU frequencies. When 6 CPUs are running at 1.9GHz, GPU’s freq allowed by that tool is only around 300GHz. However, GPU can still reach its peak freq when I run the CPU benchmarking SW with 6 CPUs at 1.9GHz in parallel to 1080p video playing on a real NX device.
We are going to launch commercial products this year. The overclocking on NX seems compelling, due to 35% performance increase. Is nVIDIA ok for customers to overclock NX CPU for commercial products?
The GPU & CPU power not only depends on frequency. It also depends on utilization & temperature. You can increase clock frequency & number of active cores in any power mode but when total module average power consumption exceeds 15W, the CPU/GPU clocks will be automatically throttled (50%) by HW to reduce power consumption, thus your product may observe sudden performance drop in such cases.