AAP is a Harvard architecture specification designed for experimenting with various features in compiler back ends. In particular it has features that are common within small deeply embedded systems, such as a dearth of registers, word address code memory and pointers that will not fit in an integer.

It is also designed to be easy to use in demonstrations and education/training. This includes hardware and simulator implementation as well as the tool chain and library implementation.

The design is based on no processor in particular, although as an open hardware design, it is inspired by the OpenRISC and RISC-V projects. There are features drawn from a wide range of processors developed over the past 30 years. Indeed the branch-and-link operation goes back even further, to the IBM 360.