Integrated system design using combined technologies, including, but not limited to, the use of optical interconnect and computation, the presence of micro-mechanical components, the use of integrated sensors and actuators, etc. The mixing of realization technologies poses again the problem of developing design tools and methodologies for the successful interplay of the heterogeneous components, as well as the optimization of the system objectives over such components. Soft systems are an instance of a class of such mixed systems, where the underlying technology is programmable hardware, realized either with programmable interconnect technology or with various forms of FLASH technologies.