Important note: this is a high voltage process for things like power+battery management chips. It is not a general logic process. The press release really should mention this.
The transistors on this process are very slow and power-hungry, even for such an old process -- the lowest rated supply voltage for this process is 3.3 volts whereas 1.8 volts is typical for 180nm. That's ~3.35x the active power consumption and slower switching speeds due to higher threshhold. It's meant for people who had 350nm designs (mid-1990s) and want to migrate them with the minimum possible effort (nearly all fabs have shut down their 350nm lines).
It is totally awesome that Google were able to convince GF to release this PDK! But they should be more up-front about the fact that this is a High Voltage process; most people won't notice the "MCU" at the end of the process name or know what it stands for. Their announcement about a 90nm process with Skywater last week is a big deal; this not so much, unless it's just the first of a series of process releases from GloFo.
Also this does make this 180 nm variant much more useful.
There are many kinds of interfaces or analog devices for which such a high-voltage process is absolutely needed.
Now, you can design a complete chip set for certain applications, e.g. with a central chip designed with the 90 nm Skywater PDK and one or more peripheral chips designed with the 180 nm GlobalFoundries PDK, for power management or various interfaces.
The transistors on this process are very slow and power-hungry, even for such an old process -- the lowest rated supply voltage for this process is 3.3 volts whereas 1.8 volts is typical for 180nm. That's ~3.35x the active power consumption and slower switching speeds due to higher threshhold. It's meant for people who had 350nm designs (mid-1990s) and want to migrate them with the minimum possible effort (nearly all fabs have shut down their 350nm lines).
It is totally awesome that Google were able to convince GF to release this PDK! But they should be more up-front about the fact that this is a High Voltage process; most people won't notice the "MCU" at the end of the process name or know what it stands for. Their announcement about a 90nm process with Skywater last week is a big deal; this not so much, unless it's just the first of a series of process releases from GloFo.