They can, but the function itself cannot be suspended by calling something else (i.e. await being a keyword enforces this), so any function that is called can use the original OS thread stack. Any called function can in turn be an async function, and will return a future[1] that in turn capture that function stack. So yes, a chain of suspended async functions sort of looks like a stack, but its size is known a compile time [2].
[1] I'm not familiar with rust semantics here, just making educated guesses.
[2] Not sure how rust deals with recursion in this case. I assume you get a compilation error because it will fail to deduce the return value of the function, and you'll have to explicitly box the future: the "stack" would then look a linked list of activation records.
Async function don't really call anything by themselves: the executor does, and all function called in the context of an async function is called on the executor's stack. You just end up with a fixed number of executors running on their own OS thread with a normal stack.
[1] I'm not familiar with rust semantics here, just making educated guesses.
[2] Not sure how rust deals with recursion in this case. I assume you get a compilation error because it will fail to deduce the return value of the function, and you'll have to explicitly box the future: the "stack" would then look a linked list of activation records.