An Android emulator can only mean Android running on top of an ARM emulator How so? Android supports both x86 and ARM. I would have thought x86 on x86 would be the way to go since it has been done before with good performance. Heck they wouldn't even have to write anything just ship a customized virtual box or QEmu.
The current emulator _is_ QEmu. However, the current problem is not arm emulation, but moving pixels in software. You will notice, that the more you increase resolution, the more the performance drops.
The Google IO talk linked in this thread addresses this point, so hopefully in Autumn the emulator will be usable (especially at tablet resolutions).
