1. A digital data processor comprising: an instruction memory to store a plurality of instructions, each of the instructions specifying a data processing operation and at least one data operand;

an instruction decoder connected to the instruction memory to sequentially recall the instructions from the instruction memory and to determine, for each recalled instruction, the specified data processing operation and the at least one data operand;

at least one functional unit connected to a data register file and the instruction decoder to perform a data processing operation upon at least one data operand corresponding to an instruction decoded by the instruction decoder and to cause a result of the data processing operation to be stored in the data register file; and

a streaming engine connected to the instruction decoder to, in response to a stream start instruction, recall a data stream from a memory, wherein the data stream includes a sequence of data elements and the sequence includes a plurality of nested loops, wherein the streaming engine includes: an address generator to generate stream memory addresses corresponding to the sequence of data elements of the data stream, wherein each of the plurality of nested loops has an independently specified one of a linear addressing mode and a circular addressing mode; and

a stream head register to store a data element of the data stream that is next to be used by the at least one functional unit, wherein the at least one functional unit is responsive to a stream operand instruction to receive at least one data operand from the stream head register;

wherein the data stream of the sequence of data elements is specified at least in part by a stream definition template stored in a stream definition template register, wherein the stream definition template includes a plurality of addressing mode fields each of which corresponds to a respective one of the nested loops, and each addressing mode field specifying either the linear addressing mode or the circular addressing mode for its respective nested loop.