The Cherrypal Africa has a 7-inch screen size, is powered by a 400-MHz processor and features 256-Gbytes of RAM, 2-Gbytes of flash memory and can run either the Linux or Windows CE operating systems, the company states without revealing the make or model of the microprocessor.

However, according to numerous reports of the launch of the Africa model, the processor is made by Ingenic and is an XBurst CPU which is in turn said to be based on the MIPS-II instruction set architecture. According to an online database of processors for PDAs, Ingenic's four processors, the JZ4720, JZ4730, JZ4740 and JZ4755 are all MIPS-II compatible processors. However Ingenic has also been linked speculatively to ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) in the past.

Ingenic's website is not very forthcoming. "XBurst RISC ISA is compatible of [sic] one standard RISC ISA and support [sic] Linux, WinCE, a large number of third-party softwares and development tools. XBurst SIMD instructions can effectively accelerate video/audio/graphic processing," the website says. There is one reference to MIPS-II on a supporting page for the JZ4740 microprocesso, which could be found here when this story was first posted.

On the website Ingenic claims to have implemented an eight-stage pipeline design that allows the CPU to issue instructions at speed with low power consumption. As a result it is claiming it can get its processors to reach 400-MHz clock frequency in a 0.18-micron CMOS manufacturing process technology, while other companies would typically only achieve a 200-MHz clock frequency in 0.18-micron.

The company is likely to be fabless but does not indicate where it gets its silicon fabricated.

Further claims are made: that the XBurst core is half the die area and consumes less than one third the power of similar products.

The one 400-MHz processor listed on the company website is the JZ4755, a dual-core design implemented in 0.18-micron CMOS with one CPU and one video processing unit. A datasheet download is offered but appears to be blocked.

It is not known whether Ingenic has licenses to use IP cores or ISAs from either ARM or MIPS Technologies Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.).

Cherrypal was formed in 2008 and is now owned by Tristate Hong Kong Group Ltd., a company focused on green technology and health products.

Along with the launch of the Africa, Cherrypal has also produced a 13.3-inch widescreen Bing laptop. Priced at $389 including the Windows XP operating system, the Bing is powered by an 1.6-GHz clock frequency Intel N280 processor and includes 1-Gbyte of DDR2 memory, a 160-Gbyte hard disk drive and a 1.3-megapixel web camera.

"At Cherrypal, we're extremely conscious of the so-called digital divide," said Max Seybold, the founder of Cherrypal, in a statement. "We're constantly looking for ways to bridge that gap, and the Cherrypal Africa is a huge step in the right direction."

By: DocMemory
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