A maskless lithography system for transferring a pattern onto the surface of a target. At least one beam generator generates a plurality of beamlets. A plurality of modulators modulate the magnitude of a beamlet, and a control unit controls each of the modulators. The control unit generates and delivers pattern data to the modulators for controlling the magnitude of each individual beamlet. The control unit includes at least one data storage for storing the pattern data, at least one readout unit for reading out the data from the data storage, at least one data converter for converting the data that is read out from the data storage into at least one modulated light beam, and at least one optical transmitter for transmitting the at least one modulated light beam to the modulation modulators.