Power Management Issue on the Xavier

I am trying to find out the lowest idle mode power of the Xavier. The lowest, I seem to go down is 5 watts. Here is the setup. Wondering if anyone can help me identify where the power “loss” is happening.

Installed Jetpack 4.4 on the Xavier dev kit (not NX).
Just OS flash. No CUDA, AI libs etc.
No attached sata, keyboard devices. Display is unplugged. Only ethernet is plugged in for ssh. Disabling the eth0 doesn’t help with power reduction.

nvpmodel is set to 1
No user applications are running. Standard boot after flashing Jetpack 4.4
In this configuration, the usage is about 5 watts.

However, the onboard power sensors sense the use of of only about 2 watts. There is no camera, M.2 etc. Basic out of the box dev kit.

cat /sys/bus/i2c/drivers/ina3221x/1-0040/iio:device0/in_power0_input
0

cat /sys/bus/i2c/drivers/ina3221x/1-0040/iio:device0/in_power1_input
296

cat /sys/bus/i2c/drivers/ina3221x/1-0040/iio:device0/in_power2_input
740

Any thoughts, why and where the power is being used?

lsmod is
Module Size Used by
zram 26166 1
overlay 48691 0
spidev 13282 0
nvgpu 1580098 18
bluedroid_pm 13912 0
ip_tables 19441 0
x_tables 28951 1 ip_tables

lsusb
lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Fan is not running.

hello satishzlqah,

could you please refer to Supported Modes and Power Efficiency session,
may I know which mode-id you’d configured. it seems even MaxQ power budget is 10W.
thanks

I set it to ‘1’. nvpmodel is set to 1 But it didn’t matter. Which every mode I set (0-6), when the Xavier is doing nothing (just running the OS), it seems to be consuming about 5+ watts. Wondering if something in the carrier board is using up the extra power.

In the TX2i, I was able to reduce the idle power to 1.4 watts.

hello satishzlqah,

there’re graphics module (i.e. HDMI display) and decoder/encoder engine (i.e. Camera streaming) would takes extra powers.
since Xavier running in as little as 10 W and delivering up to 32-TOPs, you might consider to use Jetson-NX or Jetson AGX Xavier 8GB for such low power consumption requirements.
thanks

Is there someway these peripheral modules can be shutoff to save power. On the TX2, the HDMI can be turned off via these commands. Can something similar be done to to turn off the encoder and HDMI?

echo -1 > /sys/kernel/debug/tegra_hdmi/hotplug
echo 4 > /sys/class/graphics/fb0/blank

hello satishzlqah,

you may have a try to disable gdm, $ sudo systemctl stop gdm
BTW,
may I know what’s the use-case to request 5-watts power consumption on Jetson-Xavier.
thanks

Hello JerryChang,
That didn’t help. The power consumption is above 5 watts. Anything else I can try?

The system is going to a battery powered solution (charged by solar panels) in a remote location (floating buoy). The system needs to be running in a low power mode gathering telemetry. When certain triggers and conditions are met, image collection and image processing needs to happen quickly. This allows the system to perform edge computing there by reducing the power needed to transmit the image data back to the cloud (satellite modem power consumption is significant and expensive).

When the system is in telemetry mode, it needs to consume as less power as possible to save on battery. On the TX2, 1.4 watts was possible. Looking for something similar on the Xavier.

suggest you may consider to use Jetson-NX or Jetson AGX Xavier 8GB for such low power consumption