Disclosed embodiments relate to an indirect memory fetch (IMF) unit. In one example, an apparatus includes circuitry to fetch and decode an instruction specifying a sparse operand array including N operands, and an index array including N contiguously-addressed indices. The apparatus further includes a processing engine associated with an IMF unit to respond to the decoded instruction by initializing the IMF unit to fetch the N operands in order, probing the IMF unit to determine that a fetched operand is ready to retrieve, retrieving the fetched operand from the IMF unit, and repeating the probing and retrieving until all N operands have been retrieved. The IMF unit, independent of the processing engine, is to fetch the N contiguously-addressed indices from the index array, use the N fetched indices to calculate memory addresses for the N operands, and issue a plurality of read requests to fetch the N operands in order.