Makes sense that creating anywhere near parity to current tech is out of reach for most people, that's unfortunate but was worth a shot I guess haha
Thanks for the link to tinytapeout! It looks great to actualize once I have a more concrete idea of a chip design
Simulations are the way to go for now I guess, the most interesting part of this exploration is trying to just create strange ISAs I suppose, so it will be nice to iterate faster in the software plane before going to physical
https://efabless.com/tinytapeout
FPGAs are likely your best bet to start out, although large ones can still get very expensive very fast. You can start out by learning a design language (eg Verilog) and testing your designs in simulation without buying any hardware.