Make Illustrator multi threaded on CPU
Illustrator performance is awful, its slow and lumbering at all but the most basic operations. It is bound to only a single cpu thread which is ridiculous now in an age of multi core and multi thread CPU's and it has been this way for many years. It cannot handle background tasks and is completely out of parity in function and performance with other Adobe software such as photoshop and inDesign.

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Irmantus commented
@Adobe, if your bean bag coders don't know how to do it, they can ask ChatGPT
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Luis Encuentra commented
25 seconds to open a document on a 13900k with RTX 4090, 64GB DDR5 RAM and nvme 4.0 with 7600 MB/s... hylarious...
Not to mention when the file is finally loaded, GPU changes tu CPU preview..... OH MY GOD.... Change this please......
Multithread please.... "force GPU" to not change to CPU please.... we need to work faster... i can learn a new language while waiting Ilustrator .... for sure....
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Anonymous commented
We are at about 6 years since this was requested. It is the 5th most requested upgrade to Adobe's software. I have a $5,000 custom built PC that runs circles around anything I throw at it. That is anything with the exception of Adobe Illustrator. When I open customer PDF files exported from AutoCAD and try and extract the vectors to separate layers it's just impossible. I click on something and wait forever for it to register. Utilizing only 1 thread for the bulk of the work is absolutely ridiculous. This is what most everyone feared about the subscription based model that they strong armed everyone in to by not offering upgrades to new versions as software used to be. Adobe has collected years worth of subscriptions from countless users and can't be bothered to use that to actually upgrade the software to solve this issue. They have you on the hook and they have you perpetually paying for a product and have ignored your requests to make this software utilize a computers full capacity for 6 years. Thank you Adobe for confirming our fears were not unfounded...
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Will Carvalho commented
No idea, why. But if 3D tasks can use full CPU, RAM and GPU, why can't other tasks?
Users should be able to decide how many resources some tasks can handle, like in Photoshop, you decide how much RAM to allocate and how much GPU RAM to allocate for 3D tasks.
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Andrew commented
@Will
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that is due to Maxon dealing with the rendering. -
Will Carvalho commented
Well, it is Multi-Threaded only on certain very limited tasks, when rendering any 3D, the CPU lights up like a Xmas tree. (screenshot attached)
Unfortunately on anything else we just get one thread at a time of usage.
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Jeremy commented
Wow, I can't believe in 2023 that AI is still single-core. This would make a HUGE difference when working with artworks containing a large number of objects (e.g., floor plans).
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InstyButte Typesetting2 commented
@Neff
You're absolutely right. I had a piece of signage (3 panels) I was working on, and it ended up slowing down to the point that I would have to wait several minutes for an action to take effect. Still, the newest CPUs have about a 70% higher IPC than my TR. I'm using an RTX 3090ti for the graphics, but a 4090 would be about a 30% improvement to rendering there. So, instead of waiting 5 minutes for something, I might only be waiting 3? It's still a disgrace. -
Neff commented
@InstyButte Typesetting2
Trust me, even with the fastes GPU and CPU currently on the market, the program would still slow down to a crawl wit ha few medium sized artboards. -
InstyButte Typesetting2 commented
@whstlblwr
Nope. Still single-threaded. ~8.2% on my TR. An Intel i9 13900k (or other) or AMD Ryzen 9 7950x would be best right now, because of their single-threaded speed, but I'm not going to build a new system just to sidestep an issue that should be fixed. And it's still a waste of the other cores being idle. Why not just go back to single-core cpus? That's what Adobe seems to be suggesting... -
Nikolas Karampelas commented
@whstlblwr lol so your fix is to buy a new system every time so adobe programs can work nice? How convenient for adobe :)
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Christoph Herde commented
@whstlblwr
That is no multitasking....
The M2 CPU is just very fast on single thread...
Illustrtor is still not Multithread capable -
whstlblwr commented
Thank you for finally making Illustrator multi-threaded. It runs like a dream now. All I had to do was buy a Mac with Apple Silicon and Illustrator has never been better. It's quicker for me to save a large AI file in iCloud drive on my intel iMac, open it on my 2022 Macbook Air, rasterize the artboard @ 600dpi, save it and wait for it to update on the iMac... than it is to simply rasterize it on the iMac. The new M2 mac mini is looking like a decent fix for this problem.
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Jayse Hansen commented
The bigger threat is actually simpler new-gen apps like Canva. Adobe has tried several times to copy this trend, but they're thinking too old school, too complicated, and too much about money-focused solutions (Adobe stock) vs user-focused solutions. Meanwhile, Canva is taking all the new-school would-be users. The new 'pros' aren't going to even consider Ai, InDesign etc. (I started by mastering Quark & Freehand, then Pagemaker/Illustrator, then InDesign, so I don't say that lightly.)
Ai could revolutionize, but it'll take someone leading with a modern vision, and more than the handful of devs currently dedicated to it.
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Nah, it’s never ignored. The task is just harder than it seems and requires a lot of effort and resources. As far as I know about programming, it basically means a complete rewriting of the core. I assume this is what is being done constantly, it’s just not done yet. But this comment means little, I know. I know only some performance changes are planned, but know nothing about the scale or the timing.
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clusterx commented
I'm afraid that the developers ignore this branch on purpose. They are satisfied with the product in this form
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nicky commented
@Nikolas Karampelas
Don't worry I have 32GB of RAM and a Samsung 960PRO M.2 HD (Read 3500mb/s / Write 2500mb/s) and Illustrator runs **** slow on mine too! -
Neff commented
Yes Nikolas, that is exactly my point. It's like adding flashy attachements to an 20 year old car, without changing the motor. All the new features are "nice", but what's their use, when Photoshop or Illustrator are crawling in slowmotion, as soon as I use more than 4 Artboards? I have 24 cores and 64gb Ram, but have to restart my photoshop tool every few hours, because they slow down too much.
I really hope the affinity suite can catch up soon, to give some real competition.
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Nikolas Karampelas commented
Neff this is true, but it also make things worst. I keep on checking photoshop and illustrator from time to time (I professionally use affinity now) and I do notice that every new fancy thing they add just make the programs even more heavy and sometimes really doesn't worth the pain.
Like for example last time I checked on photoshop was in version 21 (I think? 2020 or something?) I once again wanted to check out that new auto background remover and I tried the latest version a couple of days ago.The tool was interesting, although didn't worked always as intended but the whole app performance was abysmal... sure I don't have the latest and greatest system (Ryzen 2600, 16GB DDR4, Samsung Evo 850 SSD) but it is not a some deadhorse 2 core either.
I wonder how far this tactic will got...
edit: K-0 I think designer 2.0 is ready for making the cut with the higher tiers of graphic design world. The only thing that stand in between is the "this is what we use" mandra the bigger corporates/agencies have and "if aint broke..." mentality.
The thing is that the people who decide can't see that AI is, in fact, broken. -
K-O commented
Pro users are stuck using AI for now. Unfortunately Affinity doesnt quite cut it yet for pros but its absolutely GREAT for new or mid-low level users.
So, Adobe, knowing this, has no incentive to improve it - only to keep it JUST good enough for pro users, and devote effort to lure new customers away Affinity. So they add "New" "Features" as selling points. Researching Grammarly rather than fix hyphenation or HSB?!?!
The ball in in Affinity's court IMHO. The AI team in particular has given us 5+ years of disrespectful customer service on this forum which is perfectly reflective of their Management's philosophy towards the userbase and the product itself.