Speaker
Description
CTLab4ET (Computing Technology Laboratory for ET) was established under the ETIC (Einstein Telescope Infrastructure Consortium) project to provide the Einstein Telescope (ET) collaboration with a dedicated environment—nicknamed “TechZoo”—for testing and benchmarking emerging computing technologies. With ET’s operational horizon extending roughly a decade into the future, it is mandatory to keep pace with rapid advances in hardware and software to design a robust, scalable infrastructure for gravitational-wave data analysis. By late 2025, a first version of the ET computing model is anticipated, emphasizing the need for a laboratory capable of exploring novel technological
architectures during the ET Preparatory Phase and for ET R&D in general.
Procurement of the initial hardware resources was completed last year, establishing the foundation for TechZoo cluster. The laboratory will be inaugurated on April 14, 2025, and current efforts are focused on finalizing an access model that ensures transparent allocation of diverse resources—from CPU- to GPU-accelerated nodes—for a wide range of R&D activities. While CTLab4ET is funded by ETIC, it is committed to maintaining a close interplay with the “HPC Bubbles” initiative being developed under the TeRABIT project, thereby fostering synergies in high-performance computing at scale. A Kubernetes-based orchestration layer underpins the cluster, enabling the integration of heterogeneous hardware into both cloud-native and traditional workflows.
This contribution provides an overview of the laboratory’s hardware infrastructure and the evolving software framework designed to make the cluster readily available to the collaboration, ensuring a dynamic testbed that can adapt to the evolving demands of ET data processing and foster innovative computing solutions.
