While these registers are architecturally 64-bit registers, in many systems they will be accessed over a simple 32-bit bus that doesn't support 64-bit accesses.  This will probably be true in many systems (for example some (or maybe most?) SiFive SoCs such as the FU540 SoC).  Who wants to spend the hardware on a 2x wide bus for negligible benefit.  Plus some common bus standards won't support both 32-bit and 64-bit accesses, which complicates mapping and accessing 32-bit registers over a bus that only supports 64-bit accesses.  (Use of a 32-bit bus will tend to be true in both embedded and even high-end systems.  In the latter case the main coherent bus may be quite wide and capable of multi-width accesses, but no one wants to impose the complexity of interfacing to that bus onto all the SoC devices that have memory-mapped registers and want to have the simplest possible bus standard to interface to.)

The point of what was suggested as a result of the email discussions with Andrew a year ago, is that support for the common case should be required (e.g. 32-bit accesses) and then have a DT property that says 64-bit accesses may also be used by software.

Greg