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Compiling to C is not at all an uncommon strategy, there's at least one pretty serious Scheme implementation [1] that does this. Portability between architectures is a pretty big advantage, but in this case another one is leveraging the Boehm GC, rather than rolling your own. Could you use the Boehm GC if you emitted assembly? I would guess maybe it's possible, but you'd have to emit assembly that followed C calling conventions, I would imagine. Emitting C might be easier. Lisp in Small Pieces has a pretty big chapter that goes into detail how to compile Lisp to C.

[1] http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/~gambit/wiki/index.php/Main_P...