According to one embodiment of the invention, a method is disclosed for selecting a first subset of a plurality of cache ways in a cache for storing hardware threads identified as high priority hardware threads for processing by a multi-threaded processor in communication with the cache; assigning high priority hardware threads to the selected first subset; monitoring a cache usage of a high priority hardware thread assigned to the selected first subset of plurality of cache ways; and reassigning the assigned high priority hardware thread to any cache way of the plurality of cache ways if the cache usage of the high priority hardware thread exceeds a predetermined inactive cache usage threshold value based on the monitoring.