15 points
Which target did you use? Having to learn even a fraction of modern x86 would be ridiculous, but SPARC or something could be good to know, just to reduce the “magic box” effect.
4 points
I learned mips as graduate. In undergrad had to build with logic gates for things like 2 digit decimal counter and my architecture classes were diagram blocks for a simple CPU. But by that time we knew how to do moderate complexity circuits in VHDL simulation, and we had to make a simple VHDL circuit run for real in FPGA.
6 points