Which platform, at how many nodes, and why that one?
Describe the workload and the constraints that are real. Every platform in the catalog is then evaluated at every node count from one to the cap, through the engines that own each fact — decode and inference through Camera Stream Capacity, memory through Model Memory Fit, thermal through the Thermal Feasibility Checker, JetPack and runtime through the Jetson Configuration Checker, carriers, the module power ceiling and the PoE path through their own engines. A candidate is eliminated only on a hard fact, never on a soft penalty and never on budget. The survivors are ranked once, by one published weight table, on five terms: margin, evidence, cost, power and simplicity. The winner is the top of that list — there is no second pass and no re-pick.
01 · Describe the workload
Advanced
03 · How this works
One filter, one ranking function, one winner
The filter is deterministic and uses hard facts only. A candidate is infeasible when a constraint comes back FAIL or UNSUPPORTED at every node count up to the cap, or when the node count times the unit power exceeds a ceiling you stated. There is no × 1.5 tolerance on stream counts, no soft penalty for a platform in preview, and no multiplier applied to an interpolated benchmark. Budget is not part of the filter: a platform you cannot afford is a different problem from one that cannot do the job, so over-budget candidates stay in the list and are labelled.
The survivors are ranked once, by Σ wᵢ sᵢ over five terms, each in [0, 1]. Margin is one minus the worst utilization across the candidate's constraints. Evidence is the mean evidence class of those constraints, where an UNKNOWN counts as the weakest class. Cost and power are the cheapest and lowest totals divided by this candidate's totals. Simplicity is the fewest nodes divided by this candidate's node count. Nothing else enters the score — no ecosystem rating, no SDK-maturity opinion, no goal-specific branch. The weights are published, and you can recompute any score from the numbers the result returns.
Node count is part of the candidate
Each platform is evaluated at one node, then two, and so on to the cap; the reported node count is the smallest that fits. Cameras are split by a balanced assignment, so sixteen across six nodes is 3 / 3 / 3 / 3 / 2 / 2 and sums to exactly sixteen. Cost and power are always the node count times the unit figures, so a cheap module that needs eight nodes competes honestly against an expensive one that needs two. Because node count is chosen inside the ranking rather than corrected afterwards, there is no economics winner to splice to the front of the list.
UNKNOWN is never fatal and never free
A missing registry row does not eliminate a platform — only a real failure does. It does cap that platform's verdict at NEEDS VALIDATION and pull its evidence term down, and a candidate whose decode, memory and inference are all unknown is listed after every candidate with coverage, so it cannot win while a checkable option exists.
Full rules, the class E weight table and what invalidates a result: methodology. Related: Camera Stream Capacity is where the decode and inference numbers come from; Thermal Feasibility Checker owns the enclosure question; Jetson Power & PSU sizes the supply once the platform is chosen; Carrier Finder finds the board it plugs into.