Software instructions are executed on a processor within a computer system to configure a steaming engine to operate in either a linear mode or a transpose mode. A stream of addresses is generated using an address generator, in which the stream of addresses includes consecutive nested loop iterations for at least a first loop and a second loop. While in the linear mode, the first loop is treated as an inner loop. While in the transpose mode, the second loop is treated as the inner loop. A matrix can be fetched from memory in the linear mode to provide row-wise vectors. A matrix can be fetched from the memory in the transpose mode to provide column wise vectors.