The PS3 contains a Hypervisor which arbitrates access to the low level hardware from the “Other OS“. The Hypervisor is accessed from the “Other OS“ through a simple register based call, using the “System Call” instruction. Following is my attempt to document the Hypervisor system call interface. As this is a work in progress, and there are many unknowns, I will include comments where I have questions that I can not easily resolve, in italics.
BOLD entries have some information known about the call, other than its name, number of parameters and number of results. Unless marked with a source (e.g. kboot), information is assumed to be taken from the current Kernel.
ITALIC entries are “deprecated” hypervisor functions, listed in earlier sources but removed from the current source. These functions seem to still be callable on retail PS3s.
BOLD ITALIC entries have usage examples.
STRIKE-THROUGH entries have been removed from later versions of the hypervisor.
Underlined Entries are undocumented and have been discovered by probing