The device provides an option to either use SMBus programmed registers (software) to control the outputs or by using the hardware OE# pins. In case of using software to control the outputs, the hardware OE# pins can be left floating as each of these pins have a pulldown to ground. Refer to Table 8-1 and the Section 8.6 section for more information on programming the register.

When the user wants to control the outputs with the hardware OE# pins, they can do so for example by connecting these pins to a GPIO controller and follow the Section 5 section to set the outputs to HIGH/LOW. The bits OUT_EN_CLK7 to OUT_EN_CLK0 used to control the outputs are shown in registers OECR1 (Table 8-6) and OECR2 (Table 8-7). These register bits are set to 1 by default to ensure that the outputs are "software enabled" and their state is therefore set by hardware OE# pins.