Abstract: A method, apparatus and computer program product for providing auditory feedback in a personal virtual assistant (PVA) is presented. A user communication is received at the PVA. A determination is made whether an event sound is required in response to the receiving a user communication and upon determination that an event sound is required, an event sound is provided to the user and upon determination that an event sound is not required an event sound is not provided to the user. A response to the communication received from the user is determined and is transmitted to the user.

Abstract: An enhanced ATM switch with CPU node interconnect functionality and peripheral interconnect functionality and network functionality. The ATM switch provides low latency transfer between computer nodes and performs input/output operations with peripherals through the ATM network. SCSI Fibre Channel protocol (FCP) commands are implemented according to ATM standards to provide communication with peripherals. A segmentation and reassembly (SAR) unit is provided for performing ATM segmentation and reassembly. The SAR includes functional units which allow direct connection of an application agent to the core of the switch once the cell characteristics are determined by the application agent and provides ATM cell translation to and from available kernel buffers. The transmission media in the ATM network comprises digital optical links. The enhanced ATM switch may also include a synchronous optical network (SONET) interface for providing SONET transmission over the digital optical links in the ATM network.