  Resistive switches are a class of emerging nanoelectronics devices that
exhibit a wide variety of switching characteristics closely resembling
behaviors of biological synapses. Assembled into random networks, such
resistive switches produce emerging behaviors far more complex than that of
individual devices. This was previously demonstrated in simulations that
exploit information processing within these random networks to solve tasks that
require nonlinear computation as well as memory. Physical assemblies of such
networks manifest complex spatial structures and basic processing capabilities
often related to biologically-inspired computing. We model and simulate random
resistive switch networks and analyze their computational capacities. We
provide a detailed discussion of the relevant design parameters and establish
the link to the physical assemblies by relating the modeling parameters to
physical parameters. More globally connected networks and an increased network
switching activity are means to increase the computational capacity linearly at
the expense of exponentially growing energy consumption. We discuss a new
modular approach that exhibits higher computational capacities and energy
consumption growing linearly with the number of networks used. The results show
how to optimize the trade-off between computational capacity and energy
efficiency and are relevant for the design and fabrication of novel computing
architectures that harness random assemblies of emerging nanodevices.
