If you accept that computation is universal, then yes, you could definitely achieve human-like understanding through means that are completely different from the actual human wet-ware.

It might not be very efficient... but it's certainly possible. If the universe is isomorphic to a Turing machine, then the human brain certainly is. If that is so, then it is possible in principle to create a human-like machine with any other Turing-complete machine. It just might take you a billion years to simulate one second of human brain activity.