GRAPHICS CONTROLLER IMAGE CREATION

The conversion of a drawing instruction into respective pixmap locations resident in main memory is typically performed by a host processor when an associated graphics processor cannot access the main memory. Such conversion is enhanced by employing a common pixmap accessible to the graphics processor, and arranging the host processor so that it changes a drawing instruction which references a respective pixmap into one which references the common pixmap. The changed drawing instruction is then passed to the graphic processor for conversion into respective memory locations resident in the common pixmap. Thereafter, the contents of the common pixmap is transferred to the block of main memory reserved for the respective pixmap.