[U-Boot] Size of external u-boot commands

My networking hardware needs microcode loaded into it before it will function. What's the best method to load this code? It's 70KB.

My current u-boot image is 170KB. I started working with the code in examples and api_examples. But the "hello world" programs built using those APIs are 65-72KB in size. That's almost half the size of my u-boot image and these programs just print "hello world". Why are these programs so big? My goal was to put the loader program and my microcode into a single 128KB erase block.

My code for loading the microcode into the hardware is 7KB. Now it looks like I will need to incorporate it into the main u-boot image instead of making it an external command.