Rescheduling due to a hardware interrupt occurs in two cases:
The realtime clock generates periodic interrupts for the kernel, causing time-based rescheduling.
For example, if you issue a sleep (10); call, a number of realtime clock interrupts will occur; the kernel increments the time-of-day clock at each interrupt. When the time-of-day clock indicates that 10 seconds have elapsed, the kernel reschedules your thread as READY. (This is discussed in more detail in the Clocks, Timers, and Getting a Kick Every So Often chapter.)
Other threads might wait for hardware interrupts from peripherals, such as the serial port, a hard disk, or an audio card. In this case, they are blocked in the kernel waiting for a hardware interrupt; the thread will be rescheduled by the kernel only after that “event” is generated.