A selected thread is scheduled to run on a corresponding master of a multiple threaded processing system. When the priority of the selected thread is high, the selected thread is run on the corresponding master. When the priority of the selected thread is low and the corresponding master is in an operational mode, the selected thread is run on the corresponding master. When the priority of the selected thread is low and the corresponding master is in a low power mode, the selected thread is selectively run on the corresponding master based on an amount of time that the corresponding master has been in the low power mode since its most recent entrance into the low power mode.