How much do you cache? Hardware is difficult because you could add/remove/swap it at any time, and software information is already partly cached depending on your OS.
IIRC, Windows a) builds a list of files to pre-load from disk based on your usage, and b) doesn't actually fully shut down by default (it goes to hibernate mode: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/olivnie/archive/2012/12/14/windows-8...). I don't know if any Linux distros do either of those by default, but it is certainly possible.
Also, some BIOSes already have a "quick boot" setting which caches some hardware information, particularly about memory. It usually comes with a warning that you need to disable the setting for at least one boot when installing RAM.
IIRC, Windows a) builds a list of files to pre-load from disk based on your usage, and b) doesn't actually fully shut down by default (it goes to hibernate mode: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/olivnie/archive/2012/12/14/windows-8...). I don't know if any Linux distros do either of those by default, but it is certainly possible.
Also, some BIOSes already have a "quick boot" setting which caches some hardware information, particularly about memory. It usually comes with a warning that you need to disable the setting for at least one boot when installing RAM.