Embedded software is a preferred choice for implementing system functionality in modern System-on-Chip (SoC) designs, due to the high flexibility, and lower engineering costs provided by software over hardware. With continuous improvements in embedded processor performance, many system functions, which have traditionally been implemented using dedicated hardware (such as those with real-time performance requirements), are becoming potential candidates for software implementation. For complex SoCs containing many different components, identifying such functions (or hardware blocks), and re-implementing them as embedded software, is a labor-intensive, manual, and error-prone process. In this paper we present techniques for the transformation of behaviors of selected hardware blocks into equivalent software implementations. In particular, we describe Softenit, a methodology for "softening" of SoC hardware, that takes as input, a partitioned and mapped system description, and generates a modified system architecture in which the fraction of system functionality implemented using embedded software is significantly boosted. Application of this methodology to an IEEE 802.11 MAC processor design demonstrates that it can be used to generate new, "softened" system architectures, that yield large reductions in hardware complexity, while satisfying performance requirements, at very low computational cost.