Simulating quantum imaginary-time evolution (QITE) with high precision is a major promise of quantum computation. However, the known algorithms are either probabilistic (repeat until success) with unpractically small success probabilities or coherent (quantum amplitude amplification) but with circuit depths and ancillaryqubit numbers unrealistically large for the mid term. We introduce a new type of high-precision algorithms amenable to mid-term devices. First, we present two QITE primitives featuring excellent complexity scalings. In fact, one of them is optimal in ancillary overhead (requiring a single ancillary qubit throughout) whereas the other one is optimal in runtime for small inverse temperature β or high precision ε −1 . The latter is shown by noting that the runtime saturates a cooling-speed limit that is the imaginary-time counterpart of the no fastforwarding theorem of real-time simulations, which we prove. Our primitives are based on the quantum signal processing formalism for operator-function synthesis, to which we make two technical contributions relevant beyond QITE. Second, we present a master algorithm for deterministic QITE with an overall runtime asymptotically better than that of coherent approaches and the same hardware requirements as probabilistic ones, remarkably. This is based on a surprisingly simple idea: partitioning the evolution into several low-β fragments that are successively run probabilistically. Our results are relevant to near-term quantum hardware.