empty project with huge bss section SAMG53 in AS6.2

[bandtank]

I've been an electrical engineer and embedded designer/programmer for 10 years, but the ARM/SAM ecosystem is totally new to me and quite mysterious. I don't understand what's happening under the hood in AS6.2/gcc/whatever is compiling my code because the bss section is huge even though this is my only source file:

Code: Select all

int main (void) {
    while(1);
}

  text   data    bss    dec    hex filename
   968   1080  12320  14368   3820 lrf_opt1.elf

I know there are a ton of other files in the project because AS6.2 tries to think well beyond its capabilites, but I'm still baffled by the fact that an empty project is consuming so much resource. The part that frustrates me the most is that I don't know how to figure out what's happening or if this is somehow a problem. My intent was to start from literally nothing and build up to a working application because the SAMG53 example projects skip over almost all initialization related topics. I'm building a custom board around the SAMG53 and I don't want to use the ASF or any of the other files Atmel thinks I need. If I start an empty project, I get a source code directory called cmsis and a ton of gcc specific initialization files related to clocks, ISRs, etc.

Any information at all would be greatly appreciated as most of the SAM ecosystem seems to be lacking documentation. I have no idea how to configure the SAMG53 without the aid of AS6.2, but I'm trying to learn because being constrained to a single compiler/IDE/flow is not a good idea.