An abutted-pin hierarchical physical design process is described. The abutted-pin hierarchical physical design provides solutions to the problems of the traditional hierarchical physical design and provides additional advantages and benefits. In particular, the abutted-pin hierarchical physical design does not have channels. Moreover, in the abutted-pin hierarchical physical design, components of the top-level are merged into the block-level so that the top-level netlist is reduced significantly.