Why is there an over allocation of RAM as Illustrator loads a file?

Please forgive me if this isn't on topic, this question is about the operational settings and underlaying architecture of adobe illustrator...

I have a user on my network that is using Adobe Illustrator Creative Cloud on a Windows 7 Pro workstation. She has 16 GB of RAM with an Intel core i7 CPU (860 @ 2.80GHz) and 16 GB of available Page File Space.

When she launches Illustrator I can see in Performance Monitor a reasonable amount of RAM get allocated for the application. She then tries to open an 115MB .ai file. We can see Illustrator open second thread in Performance Monitor, then as it's opening the file it begins to skyrocket with RAM, it ultimately crashes after allocating 12 GB of RAM for this 115MB file. Illustrator errors out by saying "file can not be opened. Not enough RAM".

Why is Adobe Illustrator over allocating RAM by such an absurd amount? and (sorry for a second question...) What can be done to correct this issue?