The NPU is essentially the Sony Cell "SPE" coprocessor writ large.
The Cell SPE was extremely fast but had a weird memory architecture and a small amount of local memory, just like the NPU, which makes it more difficult for application programmers to work with.
The Cell SPE was extremely fast but had a weird memory architecture and a small amount of local memory, just like the NPU, which makes it more difficult for application programmers to work with.