VMWare, cores, processes and threads on Linux

I am using VMware 5.5

I have a 5 core VM.  So I have 5 processes on the machin, as I just learned from a previous post

Now I want to convert an app that runs natively to a VM.  On the native installation I set the following limits.conf file

      xxx           soft    nproc          16384
      xxx           hard    nproc          16384

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So since I have only 5 processes, how would I change my limits.conf file to support a huge number of threads, (since I have only 5 processes, and I wish to tune my app)

Thanks