Kubernetes is a powerful system for managing containerized applications in a cluster, allowing you to easily deploy, scale, and manage your applications. But sometimes you need access to specialized hardware resources like GPUs or FPGAs in order to run your applications optimally. That's where device plugins come in!

Device plugins allow you to make specific hardware resources available to your Kubernetes applications. Instead of modifying the Kubernetes code itself, vendors can create a device plugin that you can install on your cluster. This plugin can then advertise resources like high-performance NICs, InfiniBand adapters, and other specialized hardware to the Kubelet, which is responsible for managing pods and containers on a node.

Using device plugins, you can ensure that your applications have access to the hardware resources they need to run optimally, without having to modify the core Kubernetes code.