A method, apparatus, and computer program product are disclosed for dynamically determining when to yield a processor that is assigned to perform particular work but that is currently idle. A particular processor is assigned to perform work. A determination is made regarding whether the processor is currently idle. If the processor is currently idle, a determination is made of a length of time the processor has been idle. If this determined length of time exceeds a self-tunable threshold, the processor is yielded to make the processor available to perform other work. The threshold can be dynamically tuned during runtime.