Makes a lot of sense to use the same hardware as the Almond 2015, even from a firmware development point of view.
At first I didn't know and loaded the original Almond firmware, bricking the unit. Fortunately I had an UART and was able to bring it back to life, initially loading the Almond 2015 firmware (on which it booted and ran) before realizing it should have been the A1A firmware; that is how I know it is based on the same hardware.
Fortunately I like such projects, or it could have been rather frustrating.
Tech support were most helpful, although I had to figure out the role of the A1A myself.