A method and apparatus are described that permit an application to control data transfer from a memory object of a source device to a sink device. The application can request that an operating system establish a mapping between a fast buffer and a memory object storing the data. The operating system then establishes the mapping between the fast buffer and the memory object thereby permitting the application to direct that the data of the memory object be transferred to the sink device. Thus, the sink device can use direct memory access to the source device to transfer the data from the memory object. Furthermore, if the application modifies a portion of the data of the memory object prior to directing the transfer, only the modified portion of the data is copied to main memory prior to transfer to the sink device.