Question

Do all mutex implementations ultimately call the same basic system/hardware calls – meaning that they can be interchanged?

Specifically, if I’m using __gnu_parallel algorithms (that uses openmp) and I want to make the classes they call threadsafe may I use boost::mutex for the locking? or must I write my own mutex such as the one described here

//An openmp mutex.  Can this be replaced with boost::mutex? 
class Mutex {  
public:
    Mutex() { omp_init_lock(&_mutex); }
    ~Mutex() { omp_destroy_lock(&_mutex); }
    void lock() { omp_set_lock(&_mutex); }
    void unlock() { omp_unset_lock(&_mutex); }
private:
    omp_lock_t _mutex;
};

Edit, the link above to the openmp mutex seems to be broken, for anyone interested, the lock that goes with this mutex is along these lines

class Lock
{
public:
    Lock(Mutex& mutex) 
        : m_mutex(mutex), 
    m_release(false) 
    { 
        m_mutex.lock();
    }

    ~Lock() 
    {
        if (!m_release) 
            m_mutex.unlock(); 
    }

    bool operator() const 
    {
        return !m_release; 
    }

    void release()
    {
        if (!m_release)
        {
            m_release = true;
            m_mutex.unlock();
        }
    }

private:
    Mutex& m_mutex;
    bool m_release;
};

Answer 1

You should not mix synchronization mechanisms. E.g. current pthreads mutex implementation is based on futex and it is different from previous pthreads implementations (see man 7 pthreads). If you create your own level of abstraction, you should use it. It should be considered what is your need – inter-thread or inter-process synchronization?
If you need cooperation with code that uses boost::mutex, you should use boost::mutex in place of open mp.
Additionally IMHO it is quite strange to use open mp library functions to realize mutex.