Patent ID: 7551182

Claim:
A system for assembling graphics information as a graphics display for presentation on a visual interface, the graphics information including a plurality of image portions stored in a data store, the system comprising: a management module for receiving a graphics request message and for coordinating processing of a selected number of the image portions to generate at least one representative image portion as the graphics display in response to the graphics request message; a graphics system coupled to the management module for receiving processing information from the management module to facilitate access to the selected number of the image portions and for combining them as a merged combination by combining respective pixel values obtained from the image portions to generate the least one representative image portion including the combined pixel values, the graphics system including graphics hardware configured for processing the graphics information; and a data store for storing the at least one representative image portion as the merged combination of the selected number of image portions; wherein the data store is configured as tile-based pyramidal data referenced in an associated hierarchical indexed format, the image portions stored as a plurality of image tiles in respective layers.