1. A system for simulating a lithographic design comprised of a plurality of polygons arranged in a predetermined configuration, the system comprising: a microprocessor subsystem to convert the plurality of polygons to a pixel-based bitmap representation thereof, wherein the pixel-based bitmap includes pixel data, and wherein each pixel datum represents a pixel having a predetermined pixel size; and an accelerator subsystem, coupled to the microprocessor subsystem, to calculate at least a portion of an aerial image of the lithographic design using the pixel-based bitmap representation of the lithographic design, wherein the hardware accelerator subsystem includes a plurality of programmable gate arrays configured to process the pixel data in parallel.