ARM based processors are what power 99% of today's cellular phones and mobile electronics, such as the iPhone. As one might expect, there is no room for a heat sink or fan in a mobile phone. Therefore, ARM engineers and their licensees have taken power efficiency to a whole new level with this technology. Aside from the impressive multimedia and gaming capabilities, and like most ARM-based SoCs, all of the transistor logic for the CPU, co-processor, and peripheral devices is integrated onto a single wafer of silicon, hence the term 'system-on-a-chip'. Its as if the video, sound, network, PCIe controller, memory controllers, etc, etc, etc, were crammed onto a single package. For comparison, a similar netbook platform, based on the Intel architecture, would occupy at least three, but more commonly four or more chips, resulting in a drastically larger amount of power dissipated as heat.
The 1GHz barrier for ARM chips was first traversed commercially by Marvell, with their Shiva-Plug. Texas Instruments had reached milestones even earlier with their OMAP line of chips which power devices such as the BeagleBoard development board and the OpenPandora mobile gaming platform. The Qualcomm-powered EEE PC is not the first ARM-powered netbook though; some people may still have their eyes on the Always Innovating TouchBook, which is also powered by the familiar OMAP processor. However, if ASUS blesses this marriage of ARM and Android in their cathedrals of manufacturing, then the new Qualcomm-powered ASUS EEE PC might be the first ARM-powered netbook that hits the mass market.
