there is no reason to train on that thing (except for zero shot classification demos). any cheap/lower end Nvidia gpu would do a much better job, and you would then transfer the model to the embedded thing.
Would it do better than a CPU for training? I do my dev on a MacBook Air and use AWS for training, if this cheap gpu will be a few times faster than my Air CPU than I’d be willing to get it. I usually work with medium sized models/data, too big for CPU but don’t need a multi gpu cluster.
Google colab gpu instances are free and likely faster than the jetson (and definitely faster then typical laptop or desktop cpu only training), just save the models to your gdrive
Can you recommend a cheap/lower end Nvidia GPU for training for someone who just wants to play around with NNs a bit and isn't interested in peak performance? Could I get something for $100 that would be better than my CPU?
While you can in theory run CUDA on an Nvidia 1030 GPU (currently around $100) it's really not worth it. The cheapest card actually worth buying for ML is the 1050 Ti, which can be had for around $200.
If your budget is $100 I'd take that money and hunt around for various cloud based solutions. Most have introductory offers and/or cheap/free solutions for hobbyists with modest needs. $100 will go a long way on these services if you're careful. Once you've used up your $100 you'll have a much better idea of what, if anything, you actually need.
