"Initrd" is the name of the "initial ramdisk" feature of Linux. With this, you have your loader (probably LILO or Grub) load a filesystem into memory (as a ramdisk) before starting the kernel. When it starts the kernel, it tells it to mount the ramdisk as the root filesystem. You put the disk device driver for your real root filesystem and all the software you need to load it in that ramdisk filesystem. Your startup programs (which live in the ramdisk) eventually mount the real (disk) filesystem as the root filesystem. Note that a ramdisk doesn't require any device driver.
This does not free you, however, from having to bind into the base kernel 1) the filesystem driver for the filesystem in your ramdisk, and 2) the executable interpreter for the programs in the ramdisk.
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