First some observations from the revised LMUL.

*1 The format for a given SLEN and SEW is the same for all LMUL>=1
*2 LMUL=n is equivalent to LMUL=2 * n with vl < 1/2 vlmax at that level, for n=1,2,4.
*3 Doubling SEW halves the number of elements in the same number of register bits, and visa versa..

The first provide the benefits that quad or higher widening with ESEW <= SLEN stays in data lanes.
    (resolving an ugly characteristic of quad widening.)

The combined these leads to a realization that vl is the determinant of the register group size.
If vsetvli were separately provided the number of physical registers to calculate vl, LMUL>1 is eliminated.


The format for LMUL=1/2
     - does not align with LMUL=1 complicating mixed width instructions.
    - is wasteful of space
    - but it does reduce the active portion of registers, that could benefit renaming machines (if they rename at sufficient low granularity).

Noting that point *2 could be extended into LMUL=1/2 and in conjunction with point *3:

     Widening operations to LMUL=1 can equivalently be sourced from LMUL=1 where
         source is 1/2 SEW of widened result and
        vl is length of widened result.

Rephrased relative to source SEW:

     At LMUL=1, widening operations
            take source of SEW width elements and length vl,
             and create widened result as LMUL=1 with 2*SEW and length of vl.

I recommend this uniformity apply through "fractional modes" that allocate 1/2, 1/4, etc. of the physical registers bits.

A specific optimization, such as dynamic VLEN can address the renaming micro-architectures efficiency issue.

Instead I recommend "fractional modes" that fill 1/2 of each SLEN before moving on to next physical register, with one mode using the first half and the other mode the other half.
Similar to proposed in #412  Fractional vtype field vfill – Fractional Fill order and Fractional Instruction eLement Location.

As that proposal was designed to be added to the previous LMUL modes, I am working through details of such encoding now for a revised proposal.

However, in the interim I thought these considerations might be helpful as is.