A general purpose signal processor was designed as a low-cost subsystem for a micro-computer system. This approach allows considerable flexibility in programming the device with only a slight sacrifice in computational throughput. Firmware defines the kernel operations of the signal processor, and allows for the downloading of application code from a host. A speech synthesizer has been implemented on the signal processor and is described as an example of t,he development flexibility obtained with this system. This signal processor can be placed in any IEEE696 based computer system and the user will be able to utilize the facilities of that system in developing signal processing software.