Hard links are a built-in feature of basically every modern filesystem. The bigger question to me is, why aren’t hard links working for you?

Everything that makes it better than a generic copy, yes

Well, Intel’s been talking about killing their fab business, so this seems to me more of an attempt to stave off the “obvious monopoly” scenario where all major fabs are run by TSMC. Sorta like Microsoft propping up Apple in the 90s or Google propping up Mozilla for the last 15 years.