An apparatus and method is described herein for providing an early wake scheme before spawning a new thread. An early wake indication is provided an amount of time, which may include an amount of time to perform a demotion from a current power state to a lower power state that is closer to an active power state, before a new thread is to be spawned and executed on a processing element (core or thread). Upon encountering the spawn of the new thread, such as a helper thread, the processing element is further transition from the lower power state to an active power state. And the new thread is executed on the processing element without incurring the latency associated with execution of the new thread waiting for the demotion from the current power state to an active power state after the spawn of the new thread.