How to limit get_posts()?

I’ve been researching this for the last 3 days. I’m triyng to limit the maximum amount of posts retrieved by get_posts().

I have this chunk of code:

// all filters should be applied here
$args = array(
    'nopaging'                  => true,
    'post_type'                 => get_option('ip_slug'),
    'posts_per_page'            => $ip_ipp,
    'limit'                     => 100,
    'orderby'                   => $ip_order,
    'order'                     => $ip_order_asc_desc,
    'author'                    => $author,
    'suppress_filters'          => false,

    'meta_key' => $ip_meta,
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
            'key' => $ip_key,
        )
    ),
    'cache_results' => false,
    'update_post_term_cache' => false,
    'update_post_meta_cache' => false,
    'no_found_rows' => true,
);
$posts = get_posts($args);
//

The limit parameter does not work.

UPDATE #1: I want to use, say, 5 posts per page and use multiple queries on the same page using get_posts() (not query_posts, not WP_Query) and I want to limit the database query to 100. I can’t use the paged parameter, due to multiple dynamically created loops.

You can use posts_per_page or numberposts.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts#Parameters

EDIT: Regarding your edit. You cannot have the posts_per_page different to the LIMIT in the SQL query. get_posts() creates an instance of WP_Query and returns it using the posts_per_page as the LIMIT.