[wmf]

Yes, it is assumed that all startups are running in EC2 us-east-1 and "bare metal" is the accepted term for non-virtualized systems.

[colemickens]

I don't get it. What else is bare metal meant to mean? "bare metal" = "embedded system"? What does "embedded system" mean then? I guess my age / cloud-nativeness is showing?

[unwind]

In the embedded space, there often isn't any type of OS or kernel between the application code and the hardware resources ("the metal").

If I want to send out a character through the board's serial debugging port, I don't do an open()/write()/close(), I poke the UART's transmit register.

When they said "bare metal", I too thought they ran without OS which had been kind of cool.

[gumby]

Thanks for the clarification. Yet another dilution of a technical term, sigh.

I was quite excited when I read it, and felt quite let down when I followed up.