Isaac ROS Visual SLAM + Nav2 Performance Issues: Orin AGX Slower Than Orin NX

Robotics & Edge Computing Robotics - Isaac Isaac ROS
1

System Configuration

  • Primary Hardware: Jetson Orin AGX (64GB) - experiencing issues
  • Comparison Hardware: Jetson Orin NX on ARK Jetson PAB Carrier ( ARK Jetson PAB Carrier | ARK Documentation ) - performing better
  • Storage: NVMe SSD with JetPack 6.2
  • ROS: ROS2 Humble
  • Isaac ROS: Isaac ROS Visual SLAM package
  • Navigation: Nav2 with custom polygon grid coverage planner

Problem Description

I’m experiencing counterintuitive performance issues where a Jetson Orin NX significantly outperforms a Jetson Orin AGX running the same Isaac ROS + Nav2 stack. This contradicts expected performance hierarchy.

Performance Issues on Orin AGX:

  1. First execution: Acceptable performance
  2. Subsequent runs: Severe performance degradation (2nd/3rd navigation attempts)
  3. Overall speed: Much slower than Orin NX running identical software stack

Network Performance Disparity:

Orin AGX speedtest results:
Download: 17.59 Mbit/s
Upload: 1.70 Mbit/s
Laptop on same network: ~100 Mbit/s up/down

Software Stack (Identical on Both Systems)

  • Isaac ROS Visual SLAM with ZED 2i stereo camera
  • Nav2 navigation stack
  • RPLiDAR S2 integration
  • Custom polygon grid planner for autonomous coverage
  • Key difference : The Ark Jetson Carrier PAB uses a PX4 based low level controller to control the motors. The Jetson Orin AGX uses a custom ROS2 motor driver to get encoder data and ensure each wheel is moving at the required rpm.

Key Questions

  1. Hardware Performance Inversion: Why would an Orin NX outperform an Orin AGX on the same Isaac ROS workload?
  2. Network Bottleneck: Could the slow network performance on Orin AGX be affecting ROS2 DDS communication and overall system performance?
  3. JetPack 6.2 on AGX: Are there known performance regressions or configuration issues with JetPack 6.2 on Orin AGX specifically?

Configuration Details

  • Using Isaac ROS development container
  • Both systems running identical launch configurations

The fact that the supposedly less powerful Orin NX consistently outperforms the AGX suggests there may be a configuration, driver, or firmware issue specific to the AGX platform.

Any insights on debugging this performance inversion would be greatly appreciated! Would be more than happy to provide further details.

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Hi @pmoorthy

Thanks for your post.

Jetson Stats is the tool to monitor CPU, GPU, memory, engines, and fan. You can use this tool to analyze the Jetson boards. To get a meaningful comparison, I’d suggest you reduce the differences between the two boards and make the configuration as close as possible.

Best,
Ahung