TL;DR The cc_toolchain_suite is part of the legacy toolchain configuration system. It still exists in Bazel because the migration to the new API is not complete. The register_toolchains is part of the newer, unified toolchain API. When possible use register_toolchains instead of cc_toolchain_suite/--*crosstool_top
Originally the concept of a 'toolchain' was not standardised in Bazel, so a Java toolchain would be implemented very differently than a cc toolchain.
Before the unified starlark toolchain API, cc toolchains were specified in proto-text formatted 'CROSSTOOL' files.
With the introduction of the platforms API and the unified toolchains API, the concepts in the CROSSTOOL files were converted almost 1:1 to the new unified platforms/toolchains starlark API. This was mostly to ensure that there was compatibility between the old/new API's.
One of the concepts in the older 'CROSSTOOL' configuration system was a 'toolchain suite', that allowed you to define a group of toolchains targeting different CPU's (This was before the platforms API was introduced).
As far as I understand the only reason that cc_toolchain_suite is still a part of Bazel's starlark API is that some of the apple/android toolchains have not yet been completely migrated across.
Here are a few examples of where I've opted to using the newer register_toolchains approach. Note that these toolchains do not use cc_toolchain_suite anymore.
