1. New computer h
ardw
are, unadorned with such sn
ares and delusions as an
operating system, an
HLL, or even
assembler. Commonly used in the phrase "programming on the b
are metal", which refers to the
arduous work of
bit bashing needed to create these basic tools for a new computer. Real b
are-metal programming involves things like building {boot PROM}s and {BIOS} chips, implementing basic {monitor}s used to test
device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the new computer a real development environment. 2. "Programming on the b
are metal" is also used to describe a style of
hand-hacking that relies on bit-level peculi
arities of a p
articul
ar h
ardw
are design, especially tricks for speed and space optimisation that rely on crocks such as overlapping instructions (or, as in the famous case described in {The Story of Mel}, interleaving of opcodes on a magnetic drum to minimise fetch delays due to the device' s rotational latency). This sort of thing has become less common as the relative costs of programming time and computer resources have changed, but is still found in heavily constrained environments such as industrial embedded systems, and in the code of hackers who just can' t let go of that low-level control. See {Real Programmer}. In the world of personal computing, b
are metal programming is often considered a
Good Thing, or at least a necess
ary evil (because these computers have often been sufficiently slow and poorly designed to make it necess
ary see
ill-behaved). There, the term usually refers to bypassing the BIOS or OS interface and writing the application to directly access device registers and computer addresses. "To get 19.2 kilobaud on the serial port, you need to get down to the b
are metal." People who can do this sort of thing well
are held in high reg
ard. [
Jargon File]
In addition suitable contents:
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