Eh, I don’t think NPUs are ready to be marketed so heavily, but they’ve been around for a while and do get used.

They’re basically a rebranded tensor processing unit, think a more specialised GPU that’s even more energy efficient at tensor/linear algebra.

It’s mostly used in more technical applications, such as image/audio/video processing, machine learning, or really anything maths heavy. Apple’s M series had NPUs, and are an understated reason why they perform extraordinarily well in a lot of scientific applications.

Uses for consumers are not as compelling (especially on laptop/desktop), mostly faster/more efficient subtitle generation, face recognition, and maybe blurring your zoom background.