pods` preferred inter-pod affinities if the incoming pod has no preferred inter-pod
  affinities. This option can be used as an optimization for higher scheduling throughput
  (at the cost of an occasional pod being scheduled non-optimally/violating existing
  pods preferred inter-pod affinities). To enable this scheduler option, set the

* Change scheduler to skip pod with updates only on pod annotations ([#54008](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/54008), [@yguo0905](https://github.com/yguo0905))

- Sync node status during kubelet node shutdown.
  Adds an pod admission handler that rejects new pods when the node is in progress of shutting down. ([#98005](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/98005), [@wzshiming](https://github.com/wzshiming)) [SIG Node]

  When the scheduling queue receives a cluster event, before moving each Pod from unschedulable pod pool to activeQ/backoffQ, it will call QueueingHintFn of plugins that rejected each Pod in the previous scheduling cycle.
  Depending on the value returned from QueueingHintFn, the scheduling queue changes how it queues each Pod:
  - if more than one QueueingHintFn returns QueueImmediately, it queues Pod to activeQ.

* kubectl port-forward now allows using resource name (e.g., deployment/www) to select a matching pod, as well as the use of --pod-running-timeout to wait until at least one pod is running. ([#59705](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/59705), [@phsiao](https://github.com/phsiao))

* PodSecurityPolicy: when multiple policies allow a submitted pod, priority is given to ones which do not require any fields in the pod spec to be defaulted. If the pod must be defaulted, the first policy (ordered by name) that allows the pod is used. ([#52849](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/52849), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt))

      - `kubelet_pod_worker_latency_microseconds` -> `kubelet_pod_worker_duration_seconds`
      - `kubelet_pod_start_latency_microseconds` -> `kubelet_pod_start_duration_seconds`
      - `kubelet_cgroup_manager_latency_microseconds` -> `kubelet_cgroup_manager_duration_seconds`
      - `kubelet_pod_worker_start_latency_microseconds` -> `kubelet_pod_worker_start_duration_seconds`

- kube-scheduler
  - The alpha critical pod annotation (`scheduler.alpha.kubernetes.io/critical-pod`) is deprecated. Pod priority should be used instead to mark pods as critical. ([#70298](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/70298), [@bsalamat](https://github.com/bsalamat))

- Introduction of the `DisruptionTarget` pod condition type. Its `reason` field indicates the reason for pod termination:
  - PreemptionByKubeScheduler (Pod preempted by kube-scheduler)
  - DeletionByTaintManager (Pod deleted by taint manager due to NoExecute taint)
  - EvictionByEvictionAPI (Pod evicted by Eviction API)

- The Pods and Pod controllers that are exempted from the PodSecurity admission process are now marked with the `pod-security.kubernetes.io/exempt: user/namespace/runtimeClass` annotation, based on what caused the exemption.
  
  The enforcement level that allowed or denied a Pod during PodSecurity admission is now marked by the `pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce-policy` annotation.