Abstract: An application programming interface is disclosed for loading and storing multidimensional arrays of data between a data parallel processing unit and an external memory. Physical addresses reference the external memory and define two-dimensional arrays of data storage locations corresponding to data records. The data parallel processing unit has multiple processing lanes to parallel process data records residing in respective register files. The interface comprises an X-dimension function call parameter to define an X-dimension in the memory array corresponding to a record for one lane and a Y-dimension function call parameter to define a Y-dimension in the memory array corresponding to the record for one lane. The X-dimension and Y-dimension function call parameters cooperate to generate memory accesses corresponding to the records.