In this paper we explore for the first time the impact of an ultra-thin BOX (UTBOX) with and without ground plane (GP) on a 32 nm fully-depleted SOI (FDSOI) high-k/metal gate technology. The performance comparison versus thick BOX architecture exhibits a 50 mV DIBL reduction by using 10 nm BOX thickness for NMOS and PMOS devices at 33 nm gate length. Moreover, the combination of DIBL reduction and threshold voltage modulation by adding GP enables to reduce the Isb current by a factor 2.8 on a 0.299 mu m(2) SRAM cell while maintaining an SNM of 296 mV@Vdd 1.1 V. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.