The 5407/5404 are based on an advanced modified Harvard architecture that has one program memory bus and three data memory buses. These processors provide an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) with a high degree of parallelism, application-specific hardware logic, on-chip memory, and additional on-chip peripherals. The basis of the operational flexibility and speed of these DSPs is a highly specialized instruction set.

Separate program and data spaces allow simultaneous access to program instructions and data, providing a high degree of parallelism. Two read operations and one write operation can be performed in a single cycle. Instructions with parallel store and application-specific instructions can fully utilize this architecture. In addition, data can be transferred between data and program spaces. Such parallelism supports a powerful set of arithmetic, logic, and bit-manipulation operations that can all be performed in a single machine cycle. These DSPs also include the control mechanisms to manage interrupts, repeated operations, and function calls.