Understanding what the DMP is

Hello all,

My name is Dylan and I am from South Africa. I'm new to the forum and thank you for having me! :)

I am a mechanical engineer and I am busy on a project. My understanding of sensors is rudimentary at best and lets just say that I am venturing down a new garden path. I am using an MPU-6050 in my project that has the on-board DMP and I am interfacing it with an Arduino, or Teensy 3.0 to be more exact. Now I am able to extract raw values from the device, but to me this seems a waste considering the existence of the DMP.

Now my question is, what does the DMP do exactly? I have read the marketing blurb a million times and I am familiar withe concept of the DMP. But I need a deeper understanding of what it is that it actually does. Can someone please elaborate?

Also, what does it spit out to the FIFO? Raw values, or final, useful data and rates?

And how does one call these values? Is this done purely through calling up the registers?

Hope that I am not sounding too confused. If someone could help, that would be much appreciated!

Thanks for your time,

Dylan