System-on-Module (SoM) / Carrier Board / Developer Kit

An embedded-hardware pattern where a chip ships as a small module that plugs into a carrier board with the actual connectors.

A system-on-module (SoM) packs the processor, memory, storage, and power management onto one small board, with almost no connectors of its own. A carrier board, sometimes called a baseboard, supplies the connectors the module needs to actually be used — Ethernet, USB, camera interfaces, power input. A developer kit is what a vendor sells as a ready-to-use bundle: a module plus a reference carrier board plus cooling, so a team can start developing right away. Robotics teams typically prototype and validate their software on a developer kit first, then, once the design is set, design their own compact carrier board to fit the robot's chassis and buy only the module for production. NVIDIA's Jetson line is a well-known example of this pattern.

ExampleJetson AGX Orin Developer Kit: the Orin module sits on a reference carrier board, so plugging in power and a camera is enough to start running models. For a production robot, the team later swaps in its own custom carrier board.

Also called

SoM, Core Board, Baseboard, Dev Kit

Related

NVIDIA Jetson · NVIDIA Jetson Orin · NVIDIA Jetson Thor · Onboard Compute Platform · System on Chip (SoC) · Embedded System

Sources

System on module - Wikipedia
Jetson Modules - NVIDIA Developer