Jetson Thor

NVIDIA Jetson Thor is a high-performance edge AI computing module series for robotics and embedded applications, developed by NVIDIA. Introduced in 2025 as the successor to the Jetson AGX Orin platform, it offers significantly higher AI performance for "Physical AI" systems—general-purpose autonomous robots. The Jetson Thor system-on-module (SoM) features an NVIDIA Blackwell GPU (2560 CUDA cores with 96 Tensor Cores) and a 14-core Arm Neoverse-V3AE CPU, along with 128 GB of LPDDR5X memory in its flagship configuration. This hardware delivers up to 2,070 FP4 TFLOPS of AI compute within a 130 W power envelope—about 7.5× the AI performance and 3.5× the energy efficiency of the previous Jetson Orin generation. NVIDIA markets Jetson Thor as "the ultimate platform for physical AI and robotics," designed to run multiple advanced AI models (such as vision-language and large language models) in real time at the edge.

Background

The Jetson Thor series is part of NVIDIA's Jetson family of embedded AI computing platforms, which are widely used in autonomous machines and robots. Jetson Thor was unveiled amid NVIDIA's push toward more general-purpose humanoid robotics and "physical AI"—moving beyond single-purpose robots to adaptable robots capable of high-level reasoning and diverse tasks. At GTC 2024, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang introduced the Isaac GR00T robotics platform and previewed Jetson Thor as the hardware backbone for next-generation generalist robots. Jetson Thor was officially launched as a developer kit (Jetson AGX Thor Developer Kit) in late August 2025, with general availability announced at a price of US$3,499 for the kit. The platform is not intended to replace Jetson Orin outright, but rather to sit above it as the highest-end Jetson offering, targeting applications requiring substantially more compute (e.g., generative AI and advanced humanoid robots).

Architecture and Features

GPU Architecture

Jetson Thor is built around NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU architecture, which introduces support for Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) virtualization and a new Transformer Engine for 4-bit precision computing. The Jetson Thor GPU supports native FP4 data types, dynamically switching between 4-bit and 8-bit modes to optimize performance for transformer models (e.g., large neural networks). Key GPU specifications include:

• 2,560 CUDA cores at 1.57 GHz
• 96 fifth-generation Tensor Cores
• Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) capability with 10 TPCs (Texture Processing Clusters)
• Transformer Engine with dynamic FP4/FP8 precision switching

CPU Architecture

The SoM includes a 14-core Arm Neoverse-V3AE 64-bit CPU (with 1 MB L2 cache per core and 16 MB shared L3), providing strong general-purpose and real-time processing capabilities alongside the GPU.

Accelerators and Multimedia

The module also integrates specialized accelerators:

• Third-generation Programmable Vision Accelerator (PVA 3.0) for computer vision tasks
• Dual hardware video encoders (NVENC) and decoders (NVDEC)
• Optical flow accelerator
• Always-on DSP

Video Processing

With its Blackwell GPU and advanced accelerators, Jetson Thor can run multiple high-end AI models simultaneously. Video processing capabilities include:

• Decode: Up to four 8K@30fps or ten 4K@60fps video streams in parallel
• Encode: Up to six 4K@60fps streams
• Codecs: H.265 (HEVC), H.264 (AVC), AV1 (decode), VP9/VP8
• Display: Up to four independent displays via HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a at resolutions up to 8K (7680×4320 @30 Hz)

I/O and Connectivity

Jetson Thor offers significantly expanded I/O and networking compared to its predecessors:

Networking:

• 4× 25 GbE high-speed Ethernet interfaces (aggregated via QSFP28 connector)
• 1× 5 GbE RJ45 Ethernet port
• Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth (developer kit)

Storage and Expansion:

• PCIe Gen5 lanes (configurable up to x8 + x4 + x2)
• NVMe M.2 support
• Multiple USB 3.2 Gen2 ports

Industrial Interfaces:

• CAN bus
• Multiple UARTs
• SPI
• I²C
• GPIO

Holoscan Sensor Bridge technology is supported for time-synchronized sensor streaming over Ethernet (enabling camera data over 10GbE links with low latency), which is a new approach for high-bandwidth sensor input on Jetson platforms. Jetson Thor modules have a 699-pin board-to-board connector (87 × 100 mm module size) but are not pin-compatible with Jetson Orin modules due to the new interface changes and higher power requirements (Thor modules draw up to ~120–130 W, whereas AGX Orin modules were limited to ~60 W).

Products

Jetson Thor Modules

The Jetson Thor series consists of two module variants (SoMs) and an associated developer kit:

Jetson Thor Module Specifications

Model (SoM)	GPU (architecture)	AI Performance (FP4 sparse)	CPU (cores)	Memory (LPDDR5X)	Power
Jetson T5000	2560-core Blackwell GPU (96 Tensor Cores, MIG with 10 TPCs)	2070 TFLOPS	14-core Arm Neoverse-V3AE	128 GB @ 273 GB/s	40–130 W
Jetson T4000*	1536-core Blackwell GPU (64 Tensor Cores, MIG with 6 TPCs)	1200 TFLOPS	12-core Arm Neoverse-V3AE	64 GB @ 273 GB/s	40–70 W
*Specifications for Jetson T4000 are preliminary (under development).

The Jetson T5000 is the flagship module, incorporating the full 2560-core Blackwell GPU and 128 GB memory to achieve the maximum performance. The lower-tier Jetson T4000 is a cost-reduced variant with a smaller GPU (1536 cores, 64 Tensor Cores), 64 GB of memory, and roughly 60% of the AI compute throughput of the T5000. Both modules use the same form-factor and include the new high-speed interfaces, but the T4000 targets a lower power range (up to ~70 W) for applications that don't require the absolute highest performance.

Developer Kit (Jetson AGX Thor)

NVIDIA provides the Jetson AGX Thor Developer Kit, which includes a Jetson T5000 module pre-mounted on a reference carrier board with additional peripherals:

Kit Contents:

• Jetson T5000 module
• Reference carrier board
• 1 TB NVMe SSD (M.2 slot)
• Wi-Fi 6E + Bluetooth module (M.2 Key E)
• Active cooling solution (heatsink + fan)
• 140W power adapter

I/O Ports:

• Video: 1× HDMI 2.0b, 1× DisplayPort 1.4a
• USB: Multiple USB 3.2 and USB 2.0 ports
• Networking: 5 GbE and 4×25 GbE ports (via QSFP28)
• Industrial: CAN bus, UART, I²S audio headers
• Debug: JTAG connectors

The entire dev kit assembly, including the module and cooling solution, measures approximately 243 × 112 × 57 mm in size. The Jetson AGX Thor developer kit is designed to operate as a "robot brain" out of the box, enabling researchers and engineers to evaluate performance on real workloads without designing a custom board. The dev kit began shipping to customers in Q3 2025 following its announcement.

Software Ecosystem

Operating System and SDK

Jetson Thor runs on the same software stack as other NVIDIA Jetson platforms, including:

JetPack 7.0 based on:

• Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Linux kernel 6.8
• CUDA 13.0
• TensorRT 10.13
• cuDNN 9.12
• VPI (Vision Programming Interface) 4.0

AI Frameworks

The platform supports deployment of generative AI frameworks including:

• PyTorch
• TensorFlow
• ONNX
• Models from Hugging Face, Meta, OpenAI, Gemini, Qwen, and DeepSeek

Robotics Software

NVIDIA Isaac robotics software includes:

• Isaac Sim: Physics-accurate simulation built on NVIDIA Omniverse
• Isaac Lab: Framework for reinforcement and imitation learning
• Isaac GR00T: Foundation models for humanoid robots
• Isaac ROS: Hardware-accelerated ROS 2 packages

NVIDIA Metropolis provides vision AI and smart city applications, while NVIDIA Holoscan enables real-time sensor and medical imaging pipelines.

Generative AI Performance

Jetson Thor is built to handle emerging generative AI workloads at the edge. Performance metrics include:

AI Performance Benchmarks

Metric	Performance
Time to First Token (TTFT)	< 200ms
Time Per Output Token (TPOT)	< 50ms
Speedup vs Orin (generative)	5×
Speculative Decoding	2× additional speedup

These capabilities enable real-time inference for models like large language models (LLMs) and vision-language-action models. The platform's massive 128 GB memory allows deployment of large AI models and handling large sensor data in real time.

Applications

Jetson Thor is targeted at advanced robotics and autonomous machines that require server-class AI capability at the edge:

Primary Applications

• Humanoid robots: General-purpose robots for unstructured environments
• Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs): Warehouse and logistics automation
• Drones: Advanced aerial robotics
• Industrial automation: Cobots and smart manufacturing
• Autonomous vehicles: DRIVE AGX Thor variant for automotive
• Edge AI servers: High-performance local inference

Sensor Fusion Capabilities

The high compute density and wide I/O of Thor enable:

• Multi-modal sensor fusion (camera, lidar, radar, IMU)
• Autonomous navigation and manipulation
• On-device generative models for human-robot interaction

Industry Adoption

Early Adopters

Several major companies announced adoption of Jetson Thor:

Robotics Companies:

• Agility Robotics – Digit humanoid robot
• Amazon Robotics – Warehouse automation
• Boston Dynamics – Legged robots
• Figure – Humanoid robotics
• 1X Technologies – EVE and NEO robots

Industrial Partners:

• Caterpillar – Autonomous industrial vehicles
• John Deere – Agricultural automation (evaluating)
• Medtronic – Medical robotics

Technology Companies:

• Meta – AI research for physical AI
• OpenAI – Robotics research

Ecosystem Scale

According to NVIDIA:

• Over 7,000 customers deployed Jetson Orin-based hardware by 2025
• 150+ hardware partners provide production-ready solutions
• 2+ million developers active on NVIDIA robotics platforms

Specifications Summary

Jetson Thor T5000 Technical Specifications

Category	Specification
AI Performance	2,070 TFLOPS (FP4 sparse) 1,035 TFLOPS (FP8 dense) 517 TFLOPS (FP16 sparse)
GPU	2,560-core Blackwell GPU 96 Tensor Cores (5th gen) 10 TPCs for MIG
CPU	14-core Arm Neoverse-V3AE Up to 2.6 GHz 1 MB L2 per core, 16 MB L3 shared
Memory	128 GB LPDDR5X 256-bit bus 273 GB/s bandwidth
Video Encode	Up to 6× 4K@60fps H.265/H.264
Video Decode	Up to 4× 8K@30fps Up to 10× 4K@60fps H.265/H.264/AV1
Networking	4× 25 GbE via QSFP28 1× 5 GbE RJ45 Wi-Fi 6E (dev kit)
Storage	PCIe Gen5 support NVMe M.2 USB 3.2
Power	40W – 130W configurable
Form Factor	100mm × 87mm 699-pin connector
Price	$3,499 (developer kit) $2,999 (module, 1K units)

See Also

• NVIDIA Jetson – Family of Jetson modules and kits
• Jetson AGX Orin – Predecessor high-end Jetson platform (2022)
• NVIDIA Isaac – NVIDIA's robotics software platform
• NVIDIA Blackwell – GPU architecture
• Humanoid robot
• Physical AI
• Edge computing and Edge AI
• Multi-Instance GPU
• Large language model
• Vision Language Model

External Links

• Official NVIDIA Jetson Thor page
• Jetson Developer Kits
• NVIDIA Isaac Platform
• NVIDIA Developer Forums - Jetson