RE: "critical mass" reached

I'm new to the list and recently saw an interesting thread in one of the
mailing list archives. Sorry to say I don't have a solution to the 6M
row/table + 100k inserts/day issue that the "critical mass reached" thread
discussed.

However, it did raise some questions in my mind perhaps some of the more
advanced users would know. I'm particularly interested in the 100k
inserts/day rate. What hardware was this on? What sort of benchmarking
tools/formulas are there to determine the access volume a particular
server can handle (i.e. x number of processors, x speed of harddrives, x
memory, etc). Are there users doing on the order of 1-10 million simple
inserts/accesses per day? If so, what kind of hardware?

Any info or pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks,
--Ben