what makes you think that list operations make the CPU jump randomly in memory and that implementors of, say, Lisp systems haven't optimized memory management f

what makes you think that list operations make the CPU jump randomly in memory and that implementors of, say, Lisp systems haven't optimized memory management for linked lists? A modern GC provides features generations, areas, copying and compacting. One a Lisp Machine from the 80s/90s the system saves a type sorted and locality optimized memory image, from which it later boots the Lisp system. Additionally to the typical GC optimizations (incl. integration with the paging system) it also provided CDR coding, which allocates lists as continuous memory. The GC also creates those CRD coded lists. CDR coding fell out of fashion in modern Lisp implementations, because the space and time savings aren't that great to justify the more complex implementation.