Why would you think it doesn't matter? It seems rather unlikely that a major organ would consistently retain a whole lot of useless complexity and functionality across a huge range of animals.

The brain is organic and needs to keep itself alive as well as processing data, and it processes and conveys data by alternating between electrical and chemical signals; chemistry in general is a high-noise mess.

As I don't expect conscious experience to be the result of that mess[0], I expect a digital silicon network to be able to have qualia when it's replicating both the structure of a conscious brain and the simplest parts of the behaviour of the neurones in that structure.

[0] but as nobody knows what consciousness is, I can't rule that out.