Is there any way to tell GCC to not initialize a particular global array to zero?
I want to reserve a large chunk of memory for storing a large data structure that my code manages, so I say:
#define SIZE_16_MB 0x01000000
BYTE mChunkSpace[SIZE_16_MB];
The problem is that crtinit() takes a million years to initialize this space to zero, and it is not at all necessary.
Is there any way I can force it not to initialize that space?
Currently I am hard-coding a memory address that is outside what the linker knows about, but that is not a particularly robust way of doing things.
Additionally, this is a slow embedded proc (50MHz Microblaze), so don't assume that i am talking about a PC. It really does take a long time to zero that space.
You can use the gcc attributes to store the object in another new memory section, like for example in the .noinit memory section.
BYTE mChunkSpace[SIZE_16_MB] __attribute__ ((section (".noinit")));