Andreas von Bechtolsheim, the co-founder and chief architect of computer hardware company Sun Microsystems Inc., announced his resignation as he decided to focus on a start-up called Arista Networks. The new company offers an extremely cheap ultra-fast network switch, which will compete with the products released by equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc.

The switch is designed for data-oriented organizations and is already being used by government labs, universities and Internet start-ups.

Mr. Bechtolsheim will assume the role of chairman and chief development officer, and will be joined by Jayshree Ullal, who recently quit Cisco, as chief executive and also Stanford University professor David Cheriton, as chief scientist.

Mr. Bechtolsheim explained that the company’s design allows Arista to make quick changes to its line of products, even without turning them off, and even opens an interface for customers, enabling them to easily add their own features. “My iPhone runs better software than a typical switch,” he said. "It is just mind-boggling that the cheapest consumer product has more robust software than what the Internet runs on."

The presentation aimed to present the difference between Arista’s offer and Cisco’s products, which even though offer many features, have about 20 million lines of software code running on slow processors.

He also talked about the company’s hiring system, saying that one of the mistakes that start-ups make is to hire the whole management team upfront, leading to a lot of confusion and significant money loss. He feels that a company must assemble a team one by one, depending on each business’ needs.

Mr. Bechtolsheim concluded that he will retain a part-time advisory role with Sun.