The purpose of this research is to explore the capabilities of future, multi-core heterogeneous systems, with specialized communication support, to be used as efficient and flexible execution platforms in distributed streaming applications. On such platforms, we create overlays of hardware- and software-supported execution contexts – platform overlays. Stream manipulations, represented via stream handlers, are deployed on top of such overlays, based on the ability of individual contexts to perform handler operations. As a result, stream processing is dynamically mapped to those platform resources best suited for it, and it can even be fully contained to the networking subsystems, thereby enabling in-network stream processing. Experimental results demonstrate the benefits of our approach towards meeting application-specific quality requirements. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.4.1 [Input/Output and Data Communications]: Data Communication Devices—Processors; C.2 [Computer-...