Expected Behavior. PrimeFaces (and standard JSF) does not overestimate the attributes update(and render, oncompleteetc.) for each request. They are rated on a per-view basis. For example, RichFaces does this in its own way <a4j:ajax>and gives exactly the expected behavior.
PrimeFaces update RequestContext#addPartialUpdateTarget() #addPartialUpdateTargets() .
.
RequestContext.getCurrentInstance().addPartialUpdateTargets(updateComponentList);
Collection<String>, List<String> Set<String>.
, event="change" . .
PrimeFaces, , PrimeFaces; update() ( String, Collection<String>).
RequestContext.getCurrentInstance().update(updateComponentList);