CodeBits - An event of competitive innovation

It was my pleasure and privilege to attend Codebits in 2009. As Roland Bouman says, its talk choice method is based on public voting, and therefore everyone cha have contribute to the schedule. But that is not the main reason for attending this extraordinary event. It is not just a conference. It's an innovation fest. For 1 and 1/2 days, it's a conference, where the speakers are encouraged to bring to their audience the most innovative and inspiring talks. In the afternoon of the second day, the event becomes a competition, where the teams that have registered will have 24 hours to bring a project to completion, and they have to start and finish within the allotted time. The project can be anything, and I have seen quite a lot of exciting stuff rolling live in the huge pavilion: I could hardly ignore robotics, as these little mechanical smurfs were running all over the place and you would have to be careful not to squash them when you walked. There was plenty of occasions for planning of great projects, together with attempts at improving social relations, and mixing up with big brother. There were projects based on 3D printing, and less broad projects like all-seasons keyboards. A very popular session, followed by practical workshops was lock picking. I attended one of them, learned how to pick simple and less simple locks, and I brought home some lockpicking tools. On a more technical level, I was there with Lenz Grimmer and Kai Seidler, we spoke about MySQL and other cool things, and we had lots of fun for three days. Besides the teams hacking away at their projects, there were several teams showcasing technology that had been developed by winners of the previous years, such as 3D television and intelligent phone networks. In short, This was an inspiring event, which I can warmly recommend.

Which hardware for MySQL?

MySQL has a reputation of being a lightweight database. This definition can be intended either as having limited features or as requiring little hardware.

In my experience, I have seen MySQL used in quite heavy load situations, and thus I will discard the first meaning of lightweight. As for expensive hardware, my own experience is mixed. Yahoo! and Google have shown the world that using an array of inexpensive boxes in replication is often the most sensible way of scaling. However, there are many users who don't feel comfortable with replication, and therefore buy more iron when their current box has reached its limits. Sometimes, an upgrade could be avoided by proper configuration, but this is beyond the point. Given the choice, what is your favorite hardware for MySQL?
There is a quick poll on the Dev Zone asking this question.
My own prediction is that we'll get an overwhelming majority of x86 1CPU-Dual core, but this is just a wild guess. Do you use anything different? Please, prove me wrong! Are you on my assumed majority slice? Then prove me right!
If you don't care about what I think (and you shouldn't, really!) please cast a vote for your favorite architecture!