[Toenex]

Nice. I did an EE degree many years ago even though I wanted to work in software. The single best course I did was to design, simulate and have fabricated a 4 bit microprocessor. It completely solidified my understanding of how computations took place. Hopefully, texts like this will do the same for others.

[JoeSmithson]

In a similar vein, I highly recommend the MOOC "nand2tetris" which progresses smoothly from simple logic circuits right up to a high level Java-like programming language.

[ci5er]

I did a EE CS double major a LONG time ago. Senior year included a real summonavitch VLSI course, where in Q1 we had to design a 16- or 32- bit CPU. Over Thanksgiving break, TI manufactured them for us. Q2, we built a computer. Q3, we made it bootable (OS) and C compiler. I was interviewing for jobs in Japan (school was in Terre Haute, so travel overhead!) and I thought I was going to die. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me...

[thepete2]

By "fabricate" do you mean that your design was produced in silicon? If so, that's super cool!