No, that's the Memory Protection Unit, a different thing that happens to share the acronym MPU. The Memory Protection Unit is a hardware block inside many Cortex-M microcontrollers that enforces access permissions and attributes on memory regions, marking regions read-only, no-execute, or privileged-only, and faulting on violations, which is used to sandbox tasks under an RTOS or catch stray writes. The Microprocessor Unit is an application processor (the CPU-needing-external-RAM kind from this discussion). So a statement like "the MPU protects memory regions" is about the protection unit, and notably an MCU can contain an MPU-the-protection-unit. The two meanings are disambiguated by context, and recognizing which one is meant, especially in a datasheet or an interview question, signals real familiarity with the field.
Embedded Systems Fundamentals · Interview question
Someone says "the MPU protects memory regions." Is that the microprocessor?
A strong answer
What a weak answer sounds like
You know the answer. Do you know what gets you dinged?
Pro breaks down the answer most candidates actually give to this question — and the specific reason an interviewer marks it down. It’s the difference between sounding correct and sounding senior, on all 472 questions.
From the lesson
What Is an Embedded System?
A computer dedicated to one job inside a larger device, and the MCU-vs-MPU choice (everything-on-one-chip vs an application processor running Linux) that frames every design.