sharing the same cookie session with multiple wordpress installs on the same domain?

In my opinion, it is not possible. If you are using same WordPress configuration in different folders (sub domains), then it will not share the session and cookie details with each other. For eg: if you have already logged into http://subdomain.com and trying to access the admin panel of http://subdomain.com/install2, then it will be redirected to login page and the previously logged in site will also terminate the session.

Also note, the site_url, home_url, plugins, settings and other details stored on database will differ with folders. Which means, you may try to install a new plugin install2 folder and it will be inserted into database. Since the db shared with folders, when you access the http://subdomain.com folder, it will search for the new plugin folder in it’s folder, which is actually not available and it will end up with error. So it is not possible to share detail with different folders.