Kubernetes v1.34: Introducing CPU Manager Static Policy Option for Uncore Cache Alignment

A new CPU Manager Static Policy Option called prefer-align-cpus-by-uncorecache was introduced in Kubernetes v1.32 as an alpha feature, and has graduated to beta in Kubernetes v1.34. This CPU Manager Policy Option is designed to optimize performance for specific workloads running on processors with a split uncore cache architecture. In this article, I'll explain what that means and why it's useful. Understanding the feature What is uncore cache? Until relatively recently, nearly all mainstream computer processors had a monolithic last-level-cache cache that was shared across every core in a multiple CPU package. This monolithic cache is also referred to as uncore cache (because it is not linked to a specific core), or as Level 3 cache. As well as the Level 3 cache, there is other cache, commonly called Level 1 and Level 2 cache, that is associated with a specific CPU core. In order to reduce access latency between the CPU cores and their cache, recent AMD64 and ARM architecture based pr