The invention enables dynamic, software application load adaptive optimization of data processing capacity allocation on a shared processing hardware among a set of application software programs sharing said hardware. The invented techniques allow multiple application software programs to execute in parallel on a shared CPU, with application ready-to-execute status adaptive scheduling of CPU cycles and context switching between applications done in hardware logic, without a need for system software involvement. The invented data processing system hardware dynamically optimizes allocation of its processing timeslots among a number of concurrently running processing software applications, in a manner adaptive to realtime processing loads of the applications, without using the CPU capacity for any non-user overhead tasks. The invention thereby achieves continuously maximized data processing throughput for variable-load processing applications, while ensuring that any given application gets at least its entitled share of the processing system capacity whenever so demanded.