1. A method of using an electronic device having a processor, a memory, and at least one configurable hardware component, comprising: receiving instructions in an Infrastructure Description Language (IDL) indicative of at least one of 1) one or more Service Level Hints (SLHs) indicative of application characteristics of a software application affecting hardware requirements in a runtime environment; and 2) one or more Service Level Requirements (SLRs) corresponding to specific requests for a hardware performance optimization in the runtime environment; and using the instructions at runtime of the application to configure at least one hardware infrastructure resource utilized by the application.