Based on the discussion in D61884, this was done to enable compressed
instructions by giving freedom to pick a compressible register.
Integer materializing can generate LUI, ADDI, ADDIW, SLLI and some
Zb* instructions. C.LI, C.LUI, C.ADDI, C.ADDIW, and C.SLLI all have a 5-bit
register encoding. The Zb* instructions aren't compressible. Based on
that I don't think compressibility of the register is a concern.