A method and system for software emulation of hardware support for multi-threaded processing using virtual hardware threads is provided. A software threading system executes on a node that has one or more processors, each with one or more hardware threads. The node has access to local memory and access to remote memory. The software threading system manages the execution of tasks of a user program. The software threading system switches between the virtual hardware threads representing the tasks as the tasks issue remote memory access requests while in user privilege mode. Thus, the software threading system emulates more hardware threads than the underlying hardware supports and switches the virtual hardware threads without the overhead of a context switch to the operating system or change in privilege mode.