So its just an arbitrary base-10 number, and not a constraint imposed by physics or some other outside constraint like the sound barrier? That's kind of my poi

So its just an arbitrary base-10 number, and not a constraint imposed by physics or some other outside constraint like the sound barrier? That's kind of my point, an Exaflop is a benchmark and not a 'barrier'. The sound barrier wasn't a 10^3 change in speed, the difference between a subsonic plane and a supersonic plane is measured in percentages when it comes to speed, e.g. a plane that is happy at .8 Mach for a top speed is going to be designed under a completely different set of rules than one that tops out at 1.2 Mach. Again, I'm not saying that the accomplishments are insignificant, I'm just arguing press-release semantics here.