Findings:

Base GD can't output to an XPM file. However, I found the CPAN module GD::Convert that adds output options to GD, one of which is XPM. This seems to work as advertised and didn't have a problem creating the 600x600 image memory file.

NewFromPNGData is not wrapped in Wx. Per Mark Dootson(wxperl-users), the work around is:

open my $fh, '<', \$buffer;
my $bitmap = Wx::Bitmap->new(Wx::Image->new($fh, wxBITMAP_TYPE_PNG));
[download]

This works as well. I plan to try both methods and see if there is any speed difference(currently at a 35msec screen refresh rate). My gut feel is that I might not see a speed increase. The small file size may have been writing/reading within Linux I/O buffers and not from physical disk. More testing needed.

James