Threw that at a PostgreSQL 7.4.8 instance I had on a fractional part of an AIX p570 cluster; that took a little less than 31 minutes.

It pretty much corresponds to the joint cost of:

a) Creating a file in the filesystem (JFS2, of course), plus

b) Adding an entry to each of probably half a dozen system tables

This would seem to be something where any reasonably modern + reasonably competently designed database running on a (RM+RCD) filesystem should do this reasonably quickly…

Of course, what idiot would:

a) Count this as being important as anything other than a silly exercise, or

b) Actually try to use a million tables…

$ cat /home/stewart/mysql_create_table_torture
#!/usr/bin/php -f
< ?php

$db = mysql_connect('127.0.0.1:9306','root')
or die(mysql_errno().': '.mysql_error());
mysql_select_db('test',$db)
or die(mysql_errno().': '.mysql_error());

for ($i = 1; $i <= 1000000; $i++) {
print "\r{$i}\t";
$query = "CREATE TABLE t{$i} (i TINYINT) ENGINE=MyISAM";
mysql_query($query)
or die(mysql_errno().': '.mysql_error());
}

mysql_close($db);
?>