An integrated circuit (10) has a conditional yield instruction (305) which may be used to conditionally yield execution of a currently active thread based on priority and status of other threads. In one embodiment, an I bit 304 may be used to designate whether the priority selection bits (50) are stored in the instruction itself. If the priority selection bits (50) are not stored in the instruction itself, a portion of the instruction (302) may be used to store a location indicator which indicates where the priority selection bits (50) are located (e.g. register file 22).