Yes, I frequently don't use any operating system and write bare metal C code, usually for Zynq (normally RFSoC or MPSoC class) FPGAs, although I also frequently

Yes, I frequently don't use any operating system and write bare metal C code, usually for Zynq (normally RFSoC or MPSoC class) FPGAs, although I also frequently use a Microblaze soft processor with it's entire memory in BRAM when doing initial system bring up (say for a new board). Lots of people in here don't know what "Bare metal" means. There's no operating system - at all. Anything else is not bare metal. To go further: Sometimes (if you're bringing up a new processor design) you don't even get cstdlib - you have to write it (or the processor's architecture won't even support C!). "Bare metal" means exactly that - it isn't the same as "no virtualization"... at all.