ACADEMIA
Weta Digital Brings Groundbreaking Visual Effects to Life
The Multiple Academy Award-Winning Visual Effects Leader Installs the 2500th BigIron RX Backbone Switch to Enhance and Complement Its Existing Foundry Core Network: Foundry Networks today announced Weta Digital, a multiple Academy Award-winning world-leader in visual effects creation, installed Foundry's 2500th BigIron RX Series Layer 2/3 backbone switch into its high-performance 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) visual effects production network. Weta Digital continues to expand its almost decade-long relationship with Foundry with the addition of the BigIron RX-16 to their core production network. 
A Foundry customer since the late 1990's, Weta Digital must remain on the cutting edge of technology to produce some of the most advanced and recognizable blockbuster visual effects seen worldwide. Founded in 1993 by a group of visionary New Zealand filmmakers, including Peter Jackson, Weta Digital is a powerhouse in the commercial and film visual effects industry. Among numerous awards and accolades, Weta Digital is most well known for their four Academy Awards for their spectacular work with Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "King Kong." Their groundbreaking work continues with many film features including the recent blockbuster films "Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer," "30 Days of Night," "The Waterhorse: Legend of the Deep," and "Jumper." To maintain their leadership position, Weta Digital's production network requires extremely high performance and reliability levels to generate the realistic and groundbreaking visual effects expected by audiences today. They currently employ multiple BigIron RX Series backbone switches and FastIron family of compact Layer 2/3 switches to form their 10GbE production network core. The BigIron RXs, fitted with the MRJ21 line card modules, provide a high-density platform to deliver high performance connections to the artists, servers and redundant 10GbE uplinks. Their current visual effects production network utilizes thousands of processors supported by Foundry equipment in the creation of visual effects.
"Weta Digital is excited to be the recipient of Foundry's 2500th BigIron RX Series backbone switch," said Monique Bradshaw, CTO for Weta Digital. "Foundry has been a key vendor for Weta Digital for a number of years, and Foundry equipment forms the core component of our network. Foundry equipment has been chosen for its robust capabilities and the flexibility to meet the needs of our demanding environment." Bradshaw continued, "In addition to our existing BigIron RX-8s, the BigIron RX-16 has provided expanded density and 10GbE capacity for our core systems and renderwalls. We are able to support our large group of artists, while maintaining resiliency and redundancy to address project and artist needs. As we look toward future projects, we look forward to Foundry continuing to deliver equipment that meets our evolving requirements." "We are excited that Weta Digital is the recipient of our milestone 2500th BigIron RX Series backbone switch," said Ken Cheng, vice president and general manager for Foundry's High-End and Service Provider Systems Business Unit. "Weta Digital is a highly valued and long-time customer and we are pleased to have them upgrade their powerful visual effects network with the BigIron RX-16. Weta Digital is one of the undisputed leaders in revolutionary visual effects production and the RX-16 will allow them to expand and power their network as they continue to create visual art that amazes and inspires filmgoers worldwide." Scalable to over two billion packets per second, the BigIron RX Series of Layer 2/3 Ethernet backbone switches is the most powerful Ethernet switch family in the industry. It incorporates the latest advances in switch architecture, system resilience, quality of service (QoS) and switch security in a family of modular chassis setting leading industry benchmarks for price performance, scalability and total cost of ownership (TCO). In addition to its high performance computing (HPC) role at Weta Digital, the BigIron RX Series, with its high-density and compact design, is an ideal IP solution for enterprises, data centers, data mining and Internet Exchanges and Internet Service Providers (IXPs and ISPs) where non-blocking, high density Ethernet switches are a requirement.
A Foundry customer since the late 1990's, Weta Digital must remain on the cutting edge of technology to produce some of the most advanced and recognizable blockbuster visual effects seen worldwide. Founded in 1993 by a group of visionary New Zealand filmmakers, including Peter Jackson, Weta Digital is a powerhouse in the commercial and film visual effects industry. Among numerous awards and accolades, Weta Digital is most well known for their four Academy Awards for their spectacular work with Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "King Kong." Their groundbreaking work continues with many film features including the recent blockbuster films "Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer," "30 Days of Night," "The Waterhorse: Legend of the Deep," and "Jumper." To maintain their leadership position, Weta Digital's production network requires extremely high performance and reliability levels to generate the realistic and groundbreaking visual effects expected by audiences today. They currently employ multiple BigIron RX Series backbone switches and FastIron family of compact Layer 2/3 switches to form their 10GbE production network core. The BigIron RXs, fitted with the MRJ21 line card modules, provide a high-density platform to deliver high performance connections to the artists, servers and redundant 10GbE uplinks. Their current visual effects production network utilizes thousands of processors supported by Foundry equipment in the creation of visual effects. 