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.

It is not as straightforward as it may sound :) We have been working to take advantage of threads and other hardware such as GPU/Video RAM in places where it can make a higher impact. We are prioritizing areas that are slow instead of making a generic change and destabilizing the product. Product stability is the top priority for us and we have been consistently trying to improve it. We want to move with caution and make changes without compromising on the quality. Hope this helps.
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Nikolas Karampelas commented
affinity designer is written from the ground up, they did had some joke of a program before, but they put up the work and made it right.
So adobe with all those millions can't make a program from scratch?
What a joke, they just don't care.
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K-O commented
Im guessing Illustrator is a complete mess and any performance improvement will require a rewrite. Yes, it's a massive task but it's been 7+ years and the performance was never acceptable. Are other long unresolved issues related to the core engine?
The team cant seem to fix simple 4+ year outstanding QOL issues like hyphenation or adding HSB.
The team doesnt seem to understand the userbase. The team fails to act or communicate on high priority issues. They release fixes that are broken on release requiring months / years to correct such as Asset Export or Remove Canvas Size. Its very disappointing.
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nicky commented
They could secretly pay some mole in Affinity to have him explain how they made the software multicore, have 1000000000% zoom, speed and rapidity, precision in hooking paths (nodes and curves), etc.
it's absurd, affinity should learn from Adobe's mother and not the other way around. -
Mattnymous commented
Adobe team, ooh boring, they're talking in that multi-core thread again.
Let's try and get that update on sharing japanese 3D objects on a tablet out this week. -
Jeron Kuxhausen commented
Oh Yeah I totally agree with you it's annoying seeing all these updates with new features when the core program is still slow.
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Oskar commented
Yeah, I know there have been thoughts here of what's keeping them from fixing it but it would have been a nice gesture of the team if they could at least try to explain why this isn't happening.
Or perhaps it actually is happening but it takes time? Who knows?
I would be in so much better mood if they could go out and say something like "we are working on it but it's difficult but we believe that we might have it all done in two years".
Now it's just frustrating.
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Jeron Kuxhausen commented
@Oskar People here have given thoughts on why they haven't done it, as I'm sure they would have to re-write large portions of the program but there has been silence from Adobe since switching it to Under Review. With the amount they bring in every month they need to bite the bullet and stop kicking the can down the road
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nicky commented
@Oskar holy truth, it could be at least 4x faster if it exploited all cores/threads.
Out there it seems that there are processors that also use 24 cores / 32 threads... what are they for if illustrator uses only 1 core?The thing that makes me angry is that I see illustrators wasting time (wheel spinning to think) even for simple operations and non-demanding files (zero effects).
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Nikolas Karampelas commented
Oskar they don't even pretend to be working on it. They don't care, end of story for us. They grab the money and call it a day.
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Oskar commented
Does anyone know if Illustrator team has provided any feedback on this one? I mean have they presented some thoughts on why they haven't managed to fix this?
It's incredible to see the Activity Monitor showing activity in 1 out of 12 cores in my new Mac Mini when I work in Illustrator. The frustration of knowing this could be almost 12 times faster...
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Rob Hutchings commented
Under review since 2017 .... joke
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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.