New Multithread - Multi core support?

[psmith]

I was looking at the System requirements for AutoCAD 2020 and they include the line "Multiple processors: Supported by the application" This is the first time they have ever added this to the system requirements. There has been limited support for multithread since 2000, I think. That is when Whipthread came out. I have searched for an explanation of the "Supported by the application" and nobody seems to be talking about it. Has there been a big change in the program? I just ordered new workstations for our engineering department and went for higher processor speed over multiple cores because AutoCAD has always been a single thread application. I watch the resource monitor when AutoCAD hangs up and only one core is working. Has that changed???

[s.borello]

Still single core I believe.

[natasha.l · Accepted solution]

Hello @psmith,

Thank you for posting. The system requirements are just mentioning that it is supported if multi processors are present, but to fully benefit from multi-core processors, you need to use multi-threaded software, AutoCAD is predominantly a single-threaded application.

System requirements for AutoCAD 2020 including Specialized Toolsets

Processor

Basic: 2.5–2.9 GHz processor Recommended: 3+ GHz processor Multiple processors: Supported by the application

The applications themselves (AutoCAD and AutoCAD for Mac) only support multi-core technology in specific instances, including:

• 2D regeneration
• Rendering

Please "Accept Solution" if a reply or replies have helped resolve the issue or answered your question, to help others in the community.

[nevazison]

Autodesk should take note that supporting multithreaded would justify upgrading Autocad to a new version.

It would make a lot of money for Autodesk.

Autocad has become extremely slow and outdated. Multicore processors are multiple decades old. There is a lot of developments on converting databases to multithread, and even converting linear code to multithreaded.

[rkmcswain]

@nevazison wrote:

Autocad has become extremely slow and outdated. Multicore processors are multiple decades old. There is a lot of developments on converting databases to multithread, and even converting linear code to multithreaded.

This isn't just Autodesk, it's the nature of the CAD world. Read this for more details.

[enrique.saggese]

That's not entirely correct. While it is true that CAD designs are full of dependencies, it doesn't mean that each object depends on every precedent object. In fact, if you look at a typical design, especially in parametric CAD, most designs dependency graphs look more like a branched tree than a linear graph. This means that computing the root can only be done with a single core, but as soon as there are more than object that depend on the previous object but that do not depend on each other, you can compute those in parallel, and as more objects are forked that depend on previous objects but not from objects that run in parallel branches you can make use of more threads and more cores. A complex diagram is likely to be able to exploit, in theory, more processors than you could possibly buy! 
Then why aren't AutoCAD and Fusion 360 multithreaded? Because multithreading is hard. Like, REALLY hard. It is much easier to process things in sequence than to analyze the dependency graph to see what you can process without getting stuck in a dependency. It's definitely not impossible to do this, and there are CADs that are multithreaded to a significant extent, but it requires that the code in question (modeling, object generation, rendering, etc.) is all written from scratch, you can't simply "add multithreading" to existing code with decent results. 

But I think it is about time Autodesk makes this investment. It will be expensive, but it is a tiny percentage of the expense of its customers waiting for the software to process a design using one core in an 8-core computer. Nowadays, there are no longer faster or slower single core computer, investing $2000 in a faster processor will get you a single core that's perhaps 30% faster. So there's no way today to buy a "fast computer" to do CAD work, if you are doing 3D CAD for any complex design, the fastest computer you can buy is likely still slow. I think a lot of us would gladly pay an extra $500 for CAD software that uses more than 1/10th of our $2000 computers. 

[rkmcswain]

@enrique.saggese wrote:

But I think it is about time Autodesk makes this investment.

But why would they? If you're on the board at Autodesk, why would you make this investment? Is it even an investment? They are raking in the cash so fast they can't even count it*, without spending a dime on this. We are all renting the applications just like last year and the year before and so on. What competition is there to drive them to make their CAD/BIM/Modeling software faster?

*hyperbole

ADSK

[drachkovS3DV6]

Investing in Autodesk, lol. I wonder why all CEOs selling their stock... It looks like Autodesk is cash cow and everyone is milking it until it collapses.