How do I design a cascade network of 1-bit comparators to determine if two n-bit numbers are equal?
I'm not sure if this is homework or not, so I am not going to directly answer, but hopefully, the following will help you visualise the problem and solve it.



How would you check if a two decimal numbers are the same? For example, how would you check if 123456 == 123456?

Well, you'd first check the units, are they same? 6 == 6, so yes
Then you'd check the tens, are they the same? 5 == 5, so yes
And so on.

Now you have checked 6 times for the 6 digit number. So how do you combine the result?

Well, you know that in order for the numbers to be equal, the units must be equal and the tens must be equal, and the hundreds must be equal, and ...

So how do you apply the same thing to binary?

You do it in the same way, only in binary your digits are representing powers of two rather than ten, so instead you check that the units are equal, and you check that the twos are equal, and check the fours are equal, and the eights, and so on.



Hopefully now you should be able to see how you can combine your 1 bit comparators (remember that 1 bit = 1 binary digit) to compare an n bit number.



Just to clarify another point that I've just noticed you read, n bit simply means the number of bits required in a specific application - for example if you need to compare 8 bit numbers, then n=8.

But based on the above, it should be clear that there is a structure that can be applied in a general case for any number of bits.