I've added imx23 support to qemu, with quite a lot of working peripherals, and enough to boot linux with SD card and USB working. There are bits missing (audio, video outputs) but it's otherwise working pretty well.
I've collated and cleaned the patches onto this github branch, I'd appreciate any comments and/or complementary work before I submit the patches for merging here... https://github.com/buserror-uk/qemu-buserror/commits/dev-imx233 Michael