Processing apparatus with burst read and write operations

A digital signal processing system comprises a programmable processor (PROC) and a peripheral device (PD, MEM) coupled to the programmable processor via a burst generation device (BG). The processor is arranged to communicate with the peripheral device using a read operation and a write operation, respectively, on a single data element. The burst generation device (BG) groups a plurality of read operations or a plurality of write operations in a single burst read operation or a single burst write operation, respectively.