qemu v2 worked with target armv7l but broke in v3 with pcie address conflict. Similar to this qemu issue:
http://qemu.11.n7.nabble.com/Bug-1790975-NEW-arm-virt-ecam-pcie-conflict-td598251.html
I could not figure out exactly where the problem lies, host, qemu, or target. But I am able to get working with qemu v3.1.0, using machine:
-machine virt,highmem=off
Or by adding KERNEL_CONFIG option:
CONFIG_ARM_LPAE=y