diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/smpboot.c b/arch/x86/kernel/smpboot.c
index 33a0c11797de..9fd3137230d4 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/smpboot.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/smpboot.c
@@ -285,6 +285,19 @@ notrace static void __cpuinit start_secondary(void *unused)
 	per_cpu(cpu_state, smp_processor_id()) = CPU_ONLINE;
 	x86_platform.nmi_init();
 
+	/*
+	 * Wait until the cpu which brought this one up marked it
+	 * online before enabling interrupts. If we don't do that then
+	 * we can end up waking up the softirq thread before this cpu
+	 * reached the active state, which makes the scheduler unhappy
+	 * and schedule the softirq thread on the wrong cpu. This is
+	 * only observable with forced threaded interrupts, but in
+	 * theory it could also happen w/o them. It's just way harder
+	 * to achieve.
+	 */
+	while (!cpumask_test_cpu(smp_processor_id(), cpu_active_mask))
+		cpu_relax();
+
 	/* enable local interrupts */
 	local_irq_enable();