Introduced first by Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou in the mid-1980s^[1^], chirped pulse amplification (CPA) is still the current state-of-the-art technique used in most of the highest-peak power lasers over the world. During the past decade, parallel with the considerable advances of laser materials and laser technologies, several PW-class lasers have been built in the world^[2^]. These systems allow the envisioning of extreme light applications, such as high field physics, particle acceleration to relativistic velocity, and medical applications. Two main categories of PW-class systems can be distinguished: Ti:sapphire or nonlinear (NL) optical parametric CPA (OPCPA) based systems^[3^–6^] providing ultra-short pulses (~30 fs or shorter) and Nd or Yb doped laser media picosecond (ps) or sub-ps systems^[7^–9^]. In this work we limit our discussion to the most commonly found type of such systems, composed of multi-stage Ti:sapphire-based amplifiers.