The existing MPC5500 family is based on the e200 Power core which adds DSP functionality, a floating point unit and cached memory with solutions running up to 144MHz and from 1MB up to 3MB flash program memory. One new feature is the variable length encoding (VLE), enabling the part to support 16- and 32-bit instructions and code while effectively improving code density. In addition, bigger pre-fetch buffers have been added to the core to allow for more data to be fetched ahead of the CPU processing it. This minimizes pipeline stalling and maximizes the throughput of the core, allowing for more instructions to be executed per cycle. The architecture also offers a range of tools and support features across the entire family including compilers, drivers and application code that, when available for one product, supports the entire range.