Probably the single most important operational element of a starship is it's main computer system, being responsible in some way for most every aspect of the ship's operation. The heart of the system is a set of three main processing cores, which incorporate a series of miniature subspace field generators to allow the processing of optical data at rates faster than the speed of light. The computer cores are redundant, so any one can handle the computing load of the entire ship should the need arise. An intricate optical data network (ODN) connects the cores with virtually every component on board the ship, and a subspace link is maintained with hand-held or remote devices needing computer access.