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Does this thing have a secret programming interface like the GPU does?

What is an NPU exactly anyway? A GPU without graphics hardware that works mostly in INT8? Or is the architecture different in other ways too?

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An NPU is a type of ASIC for fast, parallel matrix multiplication. GPUs and FPGAs are much more multi-purpose (and more powerful overall typically) but at the cost of much worse power efficiency.

The GPU uses Mesa and KMS/DRM nowadays. Hardly secret.

"However, only a minor part of the driver was released as open source; all of the video acceleration is done using a firmware coded for its proprietary GPU, which was not open sourced. The entire SoC itself is managed by a ThreadX-based RTOS that is loaded into the VideoCore's VPU during bootup.[16]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCore#Linux_support

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