A display generator (23) which converts acoustic sensor data stored in a bulk memory (19) into data which is displayed on a raster-type monitor. The display generator (23) provides for pixel processing and manipulation capabilities supported by a pixel formatter (65), a pixel mover (69), and an acoustic controller (57) with local memory (55). The display generator (23) converts acoustic data from a predetermined sensor format into a variety of display formats compatible with the raster-type monitor. The acoustic controller is a pixel build algorithm processor used to initialize and monitor the display generator (23) in real time. It provides for pixel address generation to construct the images in the bit mapped memory (25). The formatter (65) is an independent processor having its own controller and control algorithm processor which provides for parallel processing of the data in parallel with and independent from the operations of the pixel mover (69) and controller (57). Consequently, the display generator (23) provides for parallel pipelining of data from the bulk memory (19) to the bit mapped memory (25). The display generator (23) also permits rapid updates of the displayed image without reconstructing the entire image utilizing the pixel mover (69). The pixel mover (69) updates selected areas of the image stored in the bit mapped memory (25) by operating on multiple pixels at a time, in particular, multiple blocks of pixels comprising sixteen pixels each.