Is there in GCC a way control who initialized data is handled?

[Alexander Grobman]

Hi,

We just recently switched to PowerPC gcc 3.3.2 from 3.1.1 and found that 
the way how the initialized data distributed into sections
had been changed.

In old version initialized variables went to ".sdata" section regardless 
the init value.

The newest version puts variables, which initialized to zero, to 
".sbss". which is empty in the executable, in assumption
that the memory is cleaned before usage, while non-zero go to ".sdata".

We did not want to initalize memory to speed up boot operation.

Is there any way (a switch) to cause gcc to behave as the older version?
This will allow to initalize only required memory ..

Regards
    Alex.