I hadn't heard of that. Looking it up, it's a type of gate array which I believe inspired both S-ASIC's and devices like FPGA's. Here's an intro to each for those following along:
That put having chips made into the realm of possibilities for even a small business. Other costs might prevent that but I could see more stuff opening up. I also envisioned hard blocks done on those nodes for common components so the S-ASIC was used for custom logic (eg differentiators).