How to prevent uninitialized data from being initialized to zero

Therefore, by default, the compiler puts both zero-initialized and uninitialized data into the same data section, which is populated with zeroes at runtime by the C library initialization code. The data section can either be a RW data section (.data) or a ZI data section (.bss). When optimizing, the compiler might put small global ZI data items in RW data sections. Specifying --bss_threshold=0 prevents this behavior, and puts small global ZI data items in ZI data sections.

You can prevent uninitialized data from being initialized to zero by placing that data in a different section. This can be achieved using #pragma arm section, or with the GNU compiler extension __attribute__((section("name"))).

The following example shows how to keep uninitialized data using #pragma arm section:

#pragma arm section zidata = "non_initialized"
int i, j; // uninitialized data in non_initialized section (without the pragma,
          // would be in .bss section by default)
#pragma arm section zidata // back to default (.bss section)
int k = 0, l = 0; // zero-initialized data in .bss section

Specify --bss_threshold=0 when compiling this example code, to ensure that k and l are placed in a ZI data section. If --bss_threshold=0 is not used, section name rwdata must be used instead of zidata.

The non_initialized section is placed into its own UNINIT execution region, as follows:

LOAD_1 0x0
{
  EXEC_1 +0
  {
    * (+RO)
    * (+RW)
    * (+ZI) ; ZI data gets initialized to zero
  }
  EXEC_2 +0 UNINIT
  {
    * (non_initialized) ; ZI data does not get initialized to zero
  }
}