You're talking about modulation, and yes it varies by pad material (primarily).
But how can the pad/rotor interface go to infinite before the tire would normally let it? It's Newton's law. Any torque applied to slowing down the wheel (pad to rotor to wheel to tire) is balanced by the reactive torque coming the other way (road to tire to wheel to rotor). The pad/rotor interface can't go to infinite grip unless the tire is a) at full stop or b) locked and sliding.
That a pad/rotor that spikes this way is difficult to modulate to threshold is not at issue. That this spiking behavior changes the tire's total traction capacity (which, I'll grant, might vary slightly based on elasticity) is still in question, at least for me.
