Jetson Orin NX not drawing enough power in 40W mode

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson Orin NX
1

Hi, I am working on doing stress tests on an Orin NX + Orin Nano carrier board. This uses Jetpack 6 L4T 36.5.0.
For these tests I need to enable the ‘super mode’ power model to access the 40W configuration.

The board seems to be flashing correctly with the super mode support and I see that the board powers with
the nvpmodel set to the 40W setting:

~$ nvpmodel -q
NVPM VERB: parsing done for /etc/nvpmodel.conf
NVPM VERB: Current mode: NV Power Mode: 40W
4

I am powering the board with a variable power supply to monitor the power use. The problem is that with
the super mode configuration, I am unable to draw more than 17W of power.

This is not the case when I flash the board with NO super mode support. I tested the same script and
was able to draw up to 20W of power in the 20W mode:

~$ nvpmodel -q
NVPM VERB: parsing done for /etc/nvpmodel.conf
NVPM VERB: Current mode: NV Power Mode: 20W
3

This leads me to believe that the 40W is not being set correctly.

For further context, the image is generated in yocto with p3768-0000-3767-0001 configuration for flashing.
I have confirmed that it is correctly using the super mode files. I have attached the script I am using for testing.
This script runs the jetson_clocks command to allow for better stress testing.

Is there a known issue that could limit the power draw from the board in 40W mode?
stress-test.txt (3.0 KB)

3

You could check if you hit OC event frequently so that the power got throttled in the background.

4

I am not seeing any OC throttle messages in the kernel log so far. I don’t think it is thermal throttling either since the temperature has been maintained with the current power draw.

5

We are not talking about thermal throttling but the OC throttling.

Check these nodes first.

/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon*/oc*_event_cnt

OC throttle is a mechanism to protect board when over the power limit. It is different item from the thermal throttling.

If above OC events are all 0s, it just means your application is not enough to use more power.