You have access to 5 emulation cores, which can be programmed to emulate powers, one computational core, which can be used to run background tasks, one data core, which can be used to store data permanently, and one router core which allows cores to communicate.
The emulation cores you start with can support powers up to roughly 20 SP in strength. The computational core is capable of fast parallel computation on par with a supercomputer. While emulation cores can perform the same tasks as a computational core, at the same cost they are 20% less powerful than a computational core due to the dedicated power hardware. Data cores can store one exabyte of data and provide a build-in filesystem. The router core can handle up to 9 connections.
These emulation and computational can be programmed using a low level assembly language (machine code). Emulation cores have special hardware that allows them to manifest powers through special instructions.
You have access to a complete reference manual for this language. Each instruction has simple usage examples and the manual contains several complete example of basic powers to get you started. (Picking Software Engineering related Skills or Tinker powers makes you proficient with the language.)
Every day, you generate one core which can be used to improve your existing ones or add more. Once a core is improved or specialized, it cannot be turned back. Computational, data, and router cores each cost 5 cores to create. An emulator core costs 1 core at first level and needs 2 cores to upgrade it to level 2, and 3 cores for level 3, etc. Each level is approximately 'worth' 3 SP - a power emulated on a Level 4 core will thus be equivalent to one valued at 12 SP in this document.
You can specialize emulator cores to make them more able to support specific types of powers at the expense of making other types less powerful (+2 to chosen type, -3 to all others) for the cost of the current level.