I have successfully compiled a goldfish kernel 2.6.x for the Android emulator-arm, the problem is that the same .config file and the same compilation script won’t work for the linux stable branch ( checkout via git ).
I have to take extra steps with a vanilla kernel? Someone got linux 3.x working on an emulator?
Kernel changes for ARM SoCs are pretty slow to make their way the kernel mainline (if at all) – not least as there are 5 or 6 ARM SoCs all trying to get changes in.
Your challenge will be to find the kernel tree which is used as the integration branch for a given SoC, and on which Android kernel releases are based. There is no canonical source of information for this.
Linaro is probably a good place to start.