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As a matter of fact, I think this concept dates at least as far back as the IBM 360.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_I/O

And you can find similar concepts in a standard PC today. The GPU is an example of offloading a workload to a specialized processor.

In addition, if each individual unit of memory hardware gained mini-CPU-like data processing capability, then you would have additional faux-CPU power that scaled linearly with memory; this would allow you to do some (embarassingly parallel) things much faster than just having one additional CPU per peripheral.

Every modern hard drive is a computer in its own right.

Seagate had a cool project where each hard drive ran linux and they used the physical sas cable to run a 2.5 Gbit network (or two actually) per drive.

So you could use that as block storage for luster, hadoop, or similar and enable things like direct disk to disk copies.

Cool idea, seems unlikely to hit a reasonable price point though.