[felixge]

I'm skeptical that it's worth it myself, this was just a fun research project for me. But once hardware shadow stacks are available, I think this could be great.

To answer your first question: For most Go applications, the average stack trace depth for profiling/execution tracing is below 32 frames. But some applications use heavy middleware layers that can push the average above this limit.

That being said, I think this technique will amortize much earlier when the fixed cost per frame walk is higher, e.g. when using DWARF or gopclntab unwinding. For Go that doesn't really matter while the compiler emits frame pointers. But it's always good to have options when it comes to evolving the compiler and runtime ...