A neural processing unit (NPU) is described. The NPU includes an NPU direct memory access (NDMA) core. The NDMA core includes a read engine having a read buffer. The NDMA core also includes a write engine having a write buffer. The NPU also includes a controller. The controller is configured to direct the NDMA core to perform hardware pre-processing of NDMA data in the read buffer and post-processing of NDMA data in the write buffer on blocks of a data stripe to process tensors in artificial neural networks.