The mysql process talking with Akonadi eats up much CPU resource sometimes in KDE 4.8.1. Because there was a known CPU issue with nepomuk in KDE 4.8 I first thought its related to this. However it is not. I stopped Nepomuk in the system settings but the issue remains. I can reproduce the issue by starting kmail. Each time kmail is starting results in extremely high CPU usage from mysql for several minutes.
Update: I observe high CPU usage (approx. 50%) by mysql every five/six minutes for around two minutes. In the desktop search settings, file indexing is disabled and mail indexing is enabled. Maybe this coincides with the interval in kmail for looking for updates.
An update of the akonadi_runtime package (akonadictl, akonadiserver,...) to 1.7.1 fixes this issue for me.
marked as resolved
Apparently still happening with akonadi-runtime 1.7.2...