PARALLEL_MAX_SERVERS specifies the maximum number of parallel execution processe

s and parallel recovery processes for an instance. As demand increases, Oracle i

ncreases the number of processes from the number created at instance startup up
to this value.
If you set this parameter too low, some queries may not have a parallel executio
n process available to them during query processing. If you set it too high, mem
ory resource shortages may occur during peak periods, which can degrade performa
nce.
parallel_max_servers = 40, cpu_count=32
Actually it's not 10. The formula for PARALLEL_MAX_SERVERS default value is
CPU_COUNT x PARALLEL_THREADS_PER_CPU x (2 if PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET > 0; otherwise
1) x 5

This parameter controls the maximum number of OPQ factotum processes (p000, p001
) that are spawned during a parallel query when parallel_automatic_tuning is ena
bled.
it is usefull where there are lot s of legitimate large-table full-table scans, an
d the DBA has set parallel_automatic_tuning to allow Oracle to determine the bes
t degree of parallelism for a query.
The default value for parallel_max_servers is the number of CPUs on your server.
If you are running multiple instances on the same server, this default may be
too high, in which case you will see excessive server paging and high CPU utiliz
ation. The degree of parallelism is also dependent upon the number of partitions
in the target table, so parallel_max_servers should be set high enough to allow
Oracle to choose the best number of parallel query slaves for each query.
http://www.akadia.com/services/ora_parallel_processing.html

Default value Derived from the values of CPU_COUNT, PARALLEL_THREADS_PER_CPU,

and PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET