O valor só pode ser estendido até um máximo teórico de 32768 para sistemas de 32 bits ou 4194304 para 64 bits.
De man 5 proc
:
/proc/sys/kernel/pid_max This file (new in Linux 2.5) specifies the value at which PIDs wrap around (i.e., the value in this file is one greater than the maximum PID). The default value for this file, 32768, results in the same range of PIDs as on earlier kernels. On 32-bit platfroms, 32768 is the maximum value for pid_max. On 64-bit systems, pid_max can be set to any value up to 2^22 (PID_MAX_LIMIT, approximately 4 million).