Hardware and software are of course equivalent, as every computer science (but not every philosopher) knows.

D.R. Hofstadter posited that we can extract/separate the software from the hardware it runs on (the program-brain dichotomy), whereas Searle believed that these were not two layers but consciousness was in effect a property of the hardware. And from that, as you say, follows that you may re-create the property if your replica hardware is close enough to the real brain.

IMHO, philosophers should be rated by the debate their ideas create, and by that, Searle was part of the top group.