TECHNICAL PAPER An unconventional Arithmetic Logic Unit design and computing in Actin Quantum Cellular Automata Biplab Das 1 • Avijit Kumar Paul 1 • Debashis De 1 Received: 26 July 2018 / Accepted: 7 August 2019 Ó Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract An efficient design of basic Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), based on Actin based Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA), is presented in this paper. Boolean logic function has been realized by the collisions occur in molecular QCA network. Actin is found as thin helical filamentous form, consists of two protein chain built by its own monomer globular actin. Active participation of actin in signaling events of cytoskeleton has introduced the thought of constructing Boolean logic system in nano scale by itself. To realize the logic, filamentous actin is simulated by one dimensional partitioned QCA concept. As the width of F-Actin is only 7 nm, designing the logic circuits in high density with this unconventional technology will be more efficient than the conventional semiconductor technology. This proposed work will be illuminative in the field of unconventional computing. 1 Introduction In CMOS technology, development of integrated circuits has been carried out on the concept of scaling down the device size. In the year 1965, Gordon Moore proposed that the transistor density would be doubled every 18 months. But, now VLSI industries have reached its limits and fur- ther scaling down is not possible due to some constraint alike quantum properties, very high energy consumption, huge leakage of current etc. (Das and De 2012). To avoid the limitations, new technology should be adopted. Actin Quantum Cellular Automata (Actin-QCA), a kind of molecular QCA, can be considered as future alternatives of CMOS device for its high density.In the present work, the 3D crystal structure of the characterized F-actin is obtained from the Protein Data Bank (database) in the ‘PDB’ format that is accessed with the help of ATK-VNL QuantumWise simulation package (Bernstein et al. 1978). F-actin protein images by ATK-VNL QuantumWise simulation package is shown in Fig. 1. Actin, a protein having double helical shape, is presented in almost all Eukaryotic cells (Schuh 2011). Actin is capable with the properties of transition between its monomeric structure, globular actin (G-Actin) and polymeric structure, filamentous actin (F-Actin) (Po- varova et al. 2012; Tuszyn ´ski et al. 2004). Self-polymer- izing capabilities of actin has been attracting researchers since long (Janmey 1998; Hameroff 1998). It plays a major role in intracellular communicating phenomena like elec- trical abeyant, quantum function and signal transaction pathways (Mayne and Adamatzky 2014; Mayne et al. 2015). It can be considered as a processor of cell data and biological signaling system (Janmey 1998; Tuszyn ´ski et al. 2004). An unconventional logic system can be designed by the F-Actin (Lin and Cantiello 1993; Inokuchi and Mizo- guchi 2003; Cantiello 1997), with help of the concept, Collision Based Computing (CBC) (Sadhu et al. 2019; Siccardi et al. 2016; Siccardi and Adamatzky 2015). The automata is constructed by molecular network based on Partitioned One-Dimensional Quantum Cellular Automata (P-1D-QCA) (Inokuchi and Mizoguchi 2003). Cytoskeletal logic system was in general since early 90s with help of Microtubules and Microfilaments (Lahoz-Beltra et al. 1993; Mayne and Adamatzky 2014; Mayne et al. 2015; Janmey 1998). Similar effect of the cytoskeleton has been discussed in the presence of double helical structure like actin (De Loof et al. 2013). Formation of a F-Actin and its corresponding cell mapping is demonstrated in Fig. 1. This paper presents the design of basic nano ALU, based on the principles and rules of the actin quantum automata (Sic- cardi and Adamatzky 2015; Sadhu et al. 2019). This can be considered as the primary requirement to build a nano & Biplab Das biplab.das52@gmail.com 1 Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, West Bengal, BF 142, Sector I, Salt Lake City, Kolkata, India 123 Microsystem Technologies https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-019-04590-1