Bash: Running the same program over multiple cores

Question

I have access to a machine where I have access to 10 of the cores -- and I would like to actually use them. What I am used to doing on my own machine would be something like

Answer 1

# Wait while instance count less than $3, run additional instance and exit
function runParallel () {
    cmd=$1
    args=$2
    number=$3
    currNumber="1024"
    while true ; do
        currNumber=`ps -e | grep -v "grep" | grep " $1$" | wc -l`
        if [ $currNumber -lt $number ] ; then
            break
        fi
        sleep 1
    done
    echo "run: $cmd $args"
    $cmd $args &
}

loop=0
# We will run 12 sleep commands for 10 seconds each 
# and only five of them will work simultaneously
while [ $loop -ne 12 ] ; do
    runParallel "sleep" 10 5
    loop=`expr $loop + 1`
done