You're writing the compiler, though, so you can define the stack layout. If the stack-scanning linked-list walk were the long pole, it wouldn't be hard to elim

You're writing the compiler, though, so you can define the stack layout. If the stack-scanning linked-list walk were the long pole, it wouldn't be hard to eliminate the pointer chasing: your procedure prologue could add a pointer to each newly pushed stack frame to something like a std::deque, then pop it off in the epilogue. I don't know, maybe the fact that I'm disagreeing with someone who knows a lot more than I do about the issue should be a warning sign that I'm probably wrong?