I'm loosely in a similar boat. I learned a little Verilog and implemented a MIPS CPU with pipelining, and did some small scale stuff based on papers about systo

I'm loosely in a similar boat. I learned a little Verilog and implemented a MIPS CPU with pipelining, and did some small scale stuff based on papers about systolic arrays for matrix multiplication (a la TPU). It feels to me like there is an enormous gap between the level of complexity in implementing a simple CPU like I did to something that would actually be useful to anyone, even something relatively small and basic. Things like integrating with other components or building up more complex designs feel outside my reach. The resources I find are generally targeted either towards a very basic level of how electronics work or a very specific level of a particular task with a device. This seems like a really interesting area, but difficult to get comfortable with.