An apparatus and method for performing data access in accordance with memory access patterns are described. In one embodiment, the method includes the determination, in response to a memory access instruction, of a memory access pattern of data requested by the memory access instruction. Once the memory access pattern is determined, the data requested by the memory access instruction is accessed according to the determined memory access pattern. Finally, once the data is accessed, the data is processed according to the memory access instruction. Accordingly, in this embodiment of the present invention, data is accessed according to memory access patterns including zig-zag patterns scan, Zerotree scan, bit plane extraction, fine granularity scalability or the like.