A processing accelerator includes a shared memory, and a stream accelerator, a memory-to-memory accelerator, and a common DMA controller coupled to the shared memory. The stream accelerator is configured to process a real-time data stream, and to store stream accelerator output data generated by processing the real-time data stream in the shared memory. The memory-to-memory accelerator is configured to retrieve input data from the shared memory, to process the input data, and to store, in the shared memory, memory-to-memory accelerator output data generated by processing the input data. The common DMA controller is configured to retrieve stream accelerator output data from the shared memory and transfer the stream accelerator output data to memory external to the processing accelerator; and to retrieve the memory-to-memory accelerator output data from the shared memory and transfer the memory-to-memory accelerator output data to memory external to the processing accelerator.