Isolinear optical chips are the primary software and data storage medium employed throughout Federation computer systems. These nanotech devices represent a number of significant advances over the crystal memory cards used in earlier systems. These new chips make use of single-axis optical crystal layering to achieve sub-wavelength switching distances. Nanopulse matrix techniques yield a total memory capacity of 2.15 kiloquads per chip in standard holographic format.

Like earlier crystal memory devices, isolinear chips optimize memory access by employing onboard independent or network-capable nanoprocessors. In these new devices, however, higher processing speeds permit individual chips to manage data configuration independent of LCARS control, thus reducing system access time by up to 7%. Additionally, the chip substrate is infused with trace quantities of superconductive platinum/iridium, which permits FTL optical data transmission when energized by the FTL processing core's symmetrical subspace field. On average, this results in a dramatic 335% increase in processing speed when used in one of the main computer cores.

Isolinear chips can be ruggedized with the application of a protective tripolymer sealant over the refractive interface surface. This allows the chip to be handled without protective gloves. When so treated, isolinear chips are used as a convenient form of information transport. Many portable data-handling devices such as tricorders, PADDs, and optical chip readers are able to read and write to standard format isolinear chips.