Starting with Android SDK Tools rev 17 the Android emulator supports using the hardware virtualization feature (Intel VT, VT-x, vmx and AMD-V, SVM) which should speed-up x86 bas
After steping through this tutorial on OS X Lion, I see the following in the console, when starting the emulator:
./emulator-x86 -avd Test3 HAX is working and emulator runs in fast virt mode