Application specific instruction-set processors (ASIP) are a programmable and flexible alternative of traditional finite state machine (FSM) controlled registertransfer level (RTL) designs for multimode basedband systems. In this paper, we present two ASIPs for small scale multipleinput multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication systems that demonstrate the soundness and effectiveness of ASIPs for this type of applications. The first ASIP is programmed with multiple MIMO symbol detection algorithms for 4 × 4 systems. The supported detection algorithms are minimum mean-square error (MMSE), two variants of the selective spanning with fast enumeration (SSFE) and K-best list sphere detection (LSD). The second ASIP supports MMSE and zero-forcing dirty paper coding (ZF-DPC) algorithms for a base station (BS) with 4 antennas and for 4 users. Both ASIPs are based on transport triggered architecture (TTA) and are programmed with a retargetable compiler with high level language to meet the time-to-market requirements. The detection and precoding algorithms can be switched in the respective ASIPs based on the error-rate requirements. Depending on the algorithms, MIMO detection ASIP delivers 6.16-66.66 Mbps throughput at a clock frequency of 200 MHz on 90 nm technology. The precoder ASIP provides a throughput of 52.17 and 51.95 Mbps for MMSE and ZF-DPC precoding respectively at a clock frequency of 210 MHz on 90 nm technology.