Open Source VLM Deployment on Jetson Devices: A Practical Tutorial
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What is the Viqus Verdict?
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AI Analysis:
While the detailed tutorial and successful deployment of a 2B VLM on Jetson hardware is noteworthy, the demonstration primarily showcases the technical feasibility of running existing open-source models on edge devices. The media buzz is driven by the practical application and clear instructions, but the underlying technology is incremental. Most of the excitement is around the detailed, reproducible results and the clear demonstration of vLLM’s capabilities; it’s a significant validation of the vLLM framework and the potential of open-source VLMs for edge inference, but doesn't represent a fundamentally transformative shift in the industry.
Article Summary
This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide to deploying open-source Vision-Language Models (VLMs) on NVIDIA Jetson hardware. It focuses on the NVIDIA Cosmos Reasoning 2B model, a 2 billion parameter model designed for reasoning tasks. The core of the demonstration is the utilization of the vLLM framework, known for its efficient inference capabilities on edge devices. The article walks through setting up the necessary environment, including installing the NGC CLI, pulling the vLLM Docker image, and mounting the model weights. The guide covers three distinct scenarios – the high-performance Jetson AGX Thor, the more capable AGX Orin, and the memory-constrained Jetson Orin Super Nano – each with tailored configuration flags to maximize performance and stability. The Live VLM WebUI is then connected to the deployed model, enabling interactive webcam-based physical AI applications. The emphasis is on practical implementation, presenting the commands and configurations necessary for users to replicate the setup. This guide is beneficial for developers and researchers seeking to explore and experiment with VLMs on embedded systems.Key Points
- The tutorial demonstrates deploying the NVIDIA Cosmos Reasoning 2B VLM on Jetson AGX Thor, Orin, and Super Nano devices.
- It leverages the vLLM framework, optimized for edge inference.
- The guide offers customized configurations for each Jetson device, addressing memory constraints.
- The Live VLM WebUI allows users to interact with the deployed model via a webcam.

