The Maple kernel, which performs fundamental operations, is the core of Maple. The kernel is primarily responsible for interpreting the Maple programming language and representing Maple data structures.  The kernel performs basic operations on data structures and low-level math algorithms.  Most Maple mathematical functionality is contained in the Maple library, which is written in the Maple language.

A variety of supporting tasks are also performed in the kernel. For example, the kernel performs memory management, file I/O, access to system calls, math library and help database support, and remote process communication.

The kernel runs as a separate process from the user interface.  This allows a single user interface to use multiple kernels in parallel and mixed kernel modes, or multiple user interfaces to use one kernel, as is the case with Maplets.

The kernel executable is mserver.exe on Windows (mserver on all other platforms).  As of Maple 12, the single-threaded and multi-threaded engines have been merged into one, which has both a single-threaded (default) and a multi-threaded mode; see multithreaded for more information. This executable starts automatically in the background when Maple starts.  It communicates with the user interface over a TCP/IP socket.  The socket connection is secure; it is local to the machine running Maple and cannot be accessed from other machines on the network.