Why do we Need MTD ?

[harsh poshtiwala]

Hi friends,

I need to know why do we need MTD?
Is it the Unix / Linux constarints that recognizes everything as a
file. I.e it has built in capability to communicate with different
files with read and wrtite operations only.

where as a flash has different operation i.e erase read, erase write and erase.

So to interface and communicate with flash devices unix / linux need
to have some translation mechanism which can  allow us to communicate
with FLASh?

How do these translation mechanism maps erase read , erase write and
erase operation in to simple read write operation?

Are there any other advantages / Disadvantages of MTD ?

I am not sure what kind of flash memory are supportted with MTD?

I have already read most of the document on
http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/index.html

is there any  other document that explains in detail about MTD?
-- 
Thanks & Regards
Harsh