In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method for receiving an Extensible Markup Language (XML) packet at a host processor of a resource-constrained device, such as a mobile device or the like, and forwarding the XML packet to a programmable accelerator of the resource-constrained device. Then, using the programmable accelerator, the XML packet may be processed and information from the XML packet may be provided to the host processor. Other embodiments are described and claimed.