Method, apparatus, and system for a programmable event driven yield mechanism that may activate other threads. The yield mechanism may allow triggering of a service thread that may execute currently with a main thread upon occurrence of an architecturally-defined condition. The service thread may be activated, in response to the condition, with limited intervention of an operating system. In one embodiment, an apparatus includes execution resources to execute a plurality of instructions and a monitor to detect an architecturally-defined condition. The apparatus may include an event handler to handle a yield event generated when the architecturally-defined condition has been detected. An architectural mechanism, including processor instructions and channel registers, may be utilized to allow user-level code to enable the yield event mechanism. Other embodiments are also described and claimed.