What is "pass" in computer graphics rendering?

Question

I found that "pass" is single execution of rendering pipeline.

Is this correct? If so, if single execution of rendering pipeline outputs depth map in specific light perspective, is it called "shadow pass" or "light pass"?

Answer 1

A (render) pass tells the graphics API how you intend to make use of the framebuffers associated to that render pass.
In this way the API can know which framebuffers are used allowing optimizations if, for example, the contents of the depth buffer are not needed after the render pass.
The shadow pass is the render pass that renders the scene from the light perspective into the shadow maps.